DOCUMENTATION OF LOCAL NEEDS

D2.2

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DELIVERABLE

PROJECT ACRONYM GRANT AGREEMENT # PROJECT TITLE

Making Sense 688620 Making Sense

DELIVERABLE REFERENCE NUMBER AND TITLE

D2.2Documentation of local needs identified by communities

Revision: v9.0

AUTHORS

Mara Balestrini Ivonne Jansen-Dings Ron Salaj

(IAAC) (WAAG) (PEN)

Project co-funded by the European Commision within the Call H2020 ICT2015 Research and Innovation action

DISSEMINATION LEVEL

✔ P Public

C Confidential, only for members of the consortium and the Commission Services

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REVISION HISTORY

REVISION DATE AUTHOR ORG... DESCRIPTION

v1.0 16/06/2016 Mara Balestrini IAAC Outline template

V2.0 25/06/2016 Lily Bui FabLabBCN Smart Citizen user study

v3.0 25/06/2016 Ivonne Jansen-Dings WAAG Added Amsterdam section

v4.0 26/06/2016 Ron Salaj PEN Added Prishtina section

v5.0 28/06/2016 Mara Balestrini IAAC Contributions integration & final draft

v6.0 13/07/2016 Dan McQuillian PEN General review

v7.0 18/07/2016 Guillem Camprodon IAAC Review of section 2

v8.0 18/07/2016 Mara Balestrini IAAC Final integration of reviews

v9.0 19/07/2016 Gui Seiz IAAC Formatting & Design

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

This deliverable contains original unpublished work except where clearly indicated otherwise. Acknowledgement of previously published material and of the work of others

has been made through appropriate citation, quotation or both.

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SUMMARYMaking Sense will organise and deploy a total of nine pilot

interventions in Barcelona, Amsterdam and Prishtina.

The aim of these pilots is to:

[ i ]  Engage communities of citizens who are concerned about environmental issues and want to take action to tackle them

[ ii ]  Connect these communities of interest (concerned citizens) with communities of practice (makers and technologists)

[ iii ]  To collaboratively appropriate and develop sensing technologies, collect data about the environment, make sense of the data and effect positive change.

Successful community engagement for participatory sensing requires organisation and orchestration, and the development of technological and educational tools and resources. Moreover, it requires the identification and framing of “matters of concern”, issues that matter to those who we aim to engage.

To articulate these tasks and make sure that they respond to real local needs, PEN, WAAG, and IAAC have conducted an initial phase of community and issue identification. We have also conducted usability tests to better understand how participants make sense of the technologies required to conduct sensing experiments, with special focus on the Smart Citizen platform, which is the underlying technical infrastructure upon which Making Sense builds.

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This report comprises three sections.

The first section presents the process followed by each partner to identify issues of concern and technical requirements by communities in Amsterdam, Prishtina and Barcelona. Section two explains how the Smart Citizen data platform and sensor kit in its current version can be used to meet these needs.

Moreover, it describes how these needs inform future developments that will make the platform more suitable to the fulfilment of the communities’ expectations.

The content in section two complements deliverable 2.3 “Documentation on firmware to integrate sensors”, also by IAAC, which present a new version on the Smart Citizen Kit (v1.5) along with a thorough documentation aimed to enable the appropriation and augmentation of the participatory sensing tools in hands of the communities involved in the pilots.

Section three presents the conclusions of the report.

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INDEXIndex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1 Identifying Community Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1.1 Amsterdam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1.1.1 Identification Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1.1.2 Issues Found . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

1.1.3 Technological Requirements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

1.2 Prishtina. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

1.2.1 Identification Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

1.2.2 Issues Found . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

1.2.3 Technological Requirements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

1.3 Barcelona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

1.3.1 Identification Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

1.3.2 Issues Found . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

1.3.3 Technological Requirements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

2 Tackling Community Needs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2.1 Measuring Air Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2.2 Data Sensemaking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

2.3 Measuring Noise Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

2.4 Measuring Temperature and Humidity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

2.5 Measuring Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

2.6 Other Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

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1IDENTIFYING

COMMUNITY NEEDS

In this section we provide an overview of the processes that we followed to identify local community issues and technical

requirements in the participant cities.

Each partner has engaged in different activities with the goal to engage with communities at the grassroots level and collect data on matters of concern.

1.1 Amsterdam

1.1.1 Identification process

In Amsterdam the identification of the needs of local communities has been an ongoing process that Waag Society is carrying out since 2013.

By iteratively engaging local user groups with the first version of the Smart Citizen Kit, connecting them to experts, policy makers and local maker communities the questions, needs and concerns of different stakeholders have emerged. During the Making Sense project we have been able to expand our range of activities and support these different stakeholders even further, making sure we address both communities of interest and communities of practice.

For participatory sensing to work accessible open technologies are needed. Presently, Amsterdam has a network of 11 official air quality measurement stations. Each station is equipped with an array of accurate sensors, that give a reliable picture of the actual air quality. Alas, they are very expensive and the network is too small to be able to create a real time map of street-by-street level pollution, even though pollution levels vary greatly from street to street, and local measures can have a great effect, for better or for worse.

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Therefore, in 2013 a Waag Society’s researcher, in collaboration with the Amsterdam Smart City initiative and the Amsterdam Economic Board, started searching for an alternative solution that would be affordable and inclusive of Amsterdammers, while also benefitting from enhanced levels of ownership.

Between February and July 2014, Waag Society and its partners conducted the Smart Citizen Kit workshop series1. We worked with open source low cost sensor kits developed by Fablab Barcelona that included sensors for measuring toxic gases like CO and NO2, air temperature, humidity, light intensity and sound; an Arduino computer board for processing the data; a Wi-Fi module for sending the data to web portal; and a mobile app and API for on-the-go access. Seventy three Amsterdammers were equipped with Smart Citizen Kits and over 50 of those contributed data to the network.

While there were many technical issues with the sensor hardware and software, participants reported that they learned a lot about climate issues and that they were satisfied with the project and interested in being involved with similar projects in the future. Experts indicated the initiative was a success because much more people than expected participated in the workshops. They also emphasized that the kit was ‘just at the beginning’ and that sensors will soon improve in the future. The project showed that Amsterdammers, are in fact, interested in learning about their environments, sensors and sensing strategies.

With these lessons in hand, Waag Society, involving local academia, government and communities decided to continue the citizen-led exploration of the urban environment with the Amsterdam Smart Citizens Lab2. We developed a seven-step research methodology3 called the Amsterdam Smart Citizens Lab Approach. Over the course of seven months, between May until December 2015, citizens participated in six workshops hosted at the Waag’s Makers Guild and Fablab, a learning environment and maker space.

The approach begins with community building. The lab maintained an open-invitation model and used the local newspaper, partner websites and social media channels to generate public interest. A Meetup page was setup to complement workshop lectures and open design days with an interactive digital space for facilitating group communication, announcing meetings and sharing member experiences. The next workshop functioned as a technical analysis, where Waag Society and RIVM researchers gave in-depth lectures concerning the myriad affordable DIY sensors available on the market and their differences from professional sensors.

1 https://waag.org/en/project/smart-citizen-kit

2 https://waag.org/en/project/amsterdam-smart-citizens-lab

3 Amsterdam Smart Citizen Lab publication 2016, https://waag.org/sites/waag/files/public/media/publica-ties/amsterdam-smart-citizen-lab-publicatie.pdf

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Participants were introduced to successful online sensing platforms like Zooniverse, the Public Lab, various middleware technologies like Arduino boards, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GSM modules, and additive manufacturing techniques, that together make DIY sensing networks possible. Researchers decided to drop the exclusive use of the Smart Citizen Kit in favour of a more open innovation model that gave the groups free use of the various fabrication tools found in the Waag’s Fablab after lectures. On open design days (hosted every Tuesday) participants could ideate, design and build their own sensor assemblies with the hands-on assistance and mentorship of Waag Society experts.

Researchers from the municipality who were present at the first workshop asked the participants about their motivation for joining the Amsterdam Smart Citizens Lab. According to the survey, while 30% were motivated by the subject of the experiment, around 70% said they joined because they were drawn to the challenge of gathering sensor data and ‘learning technical skills’. The second most mentioned factor (50%) was meeting other like-minded people and creating a community.

The Lab showed that with the right institutional support, it is possible for everyday people to create their own sensor networks and gather environmental data without significant investments. People’s motivations for joining citizen science projects may have less to do with the end goals of the research itself than with acquiring new skills and being part of a community of people who want to learn about the nuts and bolts of DIY sensor technology.

This year Waag Society has expanded the Smart Citizens Lab activities in order to play into the needs from the different communities. Next to the open-invitation Meetup model, where we invite all interested community member to join, share their environmental sensing experiences and start projects together, we host lecture and workshop series like Smart Citizen Crash Courses4 or Smart Citizen Talks5. Through these activities participants, whether they are citizens, experts, academics or policy makers, bring forward environmental issues that they would like to work on. Based on the urgency of the issue, the willingness of other stakeholders to participate and the potential impact an intervention can have these issues are transformed into specific targeted pilots.

In 2016 we have started with an air quality pilot called Urban AirQ6. Throughout the Smart Citizen activities air quality has always been perceived as an urgent issue by our community of interest. Because of the advances being made in the field of low cost NO2 sensors experts also have a growing interest in the outcomes of citizen science experiments in this field and were keen to get involved with the Urban AirQ pilot. The timing of the pilot has been aligned with official traffic measurements by the city and will coincide with major roadworks in the designated area, offering ideal comparisons between heavy and low traffic loads.

4 https://www.waag.org/nl/event/crash-course-1-air-quality

5 https://dezwijger.nl/programma/making-sense-of-the-smart-city

6 https://waag.org/en/project/urban-airq

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1.1.2 Issues found

Through working with the communities, experts, academics and government we currently have identified several issues that we aim to tackle during the Making Sense pilots:

• Air: When we started in 2013 air quality has been a main concern for many of the stakeholders involved. The key components to be measured are PM2.5, PM10 and NO2. In the Urban AirQ Pilot Waag Society has been working with the Alpha Sense sensor that has been showing promising results in NO2 measurements. We are documenting our results and sharing them with partner IAAC in order to ensure our knowledge is transferred into the next iteration of the SCK.

• Sound: Noise pollution is equally an important concern of many citizens in Amsterdam. The Municipal Ombudsman7 has approached us due to many citizen complaints on noise pollution stemming from the increasing amount of festivals in the city. Participants in our community have also been working on sound measurements themselves, either related to questions around traffic management, tourists or festivals. Also a specific area in the city is dealing with noise from the railway. An active community of interests has been collaborating with our community of practice to find ways to measure potentials sound hazards.

• Water: As Amsterdam has many bodies of water many citizens have questions around the water quality, especially in regard to potential swimming possibilities. The municipality has deemed only a few areas fit for recreation, as they comply with EU standards. However many more areas have been designated as unofficial recreational areas. There is a growing interest to gain insight into the water quality in these areas.

• Soil: The northern part of Amsterdam historically has been part of heavy industry. More and more this area is being reassigned as residential. Specific areas are know because of the soil pollution in the past and new residents are eager to find ways to know more about this issue.

7 https://en.gemeentelijkeombudsman.nl/Introduction/

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1.1.3 Technological requirements

Amsterdam sees the following opportunities to expand the capabilities of the SCK:

• NO2: our experiences with the Alpha Sense NO2 sensor have been positive so far. In July a hardware expert from Waag Society will visit the IAAC team in order to transfer this knowledge and talk about integrating this sensor (as an add on) to the SCK platform.

• PM2.5 and PM10: The dust sensors are equally important for effectively measuring air quality. A new version of the SCK should evaluate which components are most effective.

• Sound: The current sensor has effective readings above 50 dB. For effective measurements, especially indoor, a more sensitive sensor could be helpful to the pilots.

• LoRa: Because of the growing internet of things networks in Amsterdam a LoRa integration would help in measuring locations that are difficult to reach through Wifi. The Things Network has reached full IoT coverage of Amsterdam and our next pilots would benefit from being able to use this network.

• Add-ons: As Waag Society works with an active community of makers in Amsterdam we are keen to be able to add on new sensors ourselves to the SCK and having the data feed into the platform.

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1.2 Prishtina1.2.1 Identification process

The pilot in Prishtina is a continuation of a process called Science for Change Kosovo that has started in 2014, as an experimental initiative to bring together affected communities, young people and other civil society organizations, to discuss, monitor and investigate air pollution in Kosovo.

Prior to the launch of the initiative, a number of interviews were held with young people and affected communities, particularly Roma minority who live in toxic areas, very close to coal and lignite-based Power Plants, near Kosovo’s capital city Prishtina8.

The interviews aimed to map the existing situation in some of the Kosovo’s most excluded communities; identify whether the local and central institutions, or other organizations, are implementing similar interventions on air pollution; and measure the interest of the community to engage directly on our experimental initiative.

All interviews were held at physical spaces, through face-to-face meetings, adopting some of the IDEO’s Human Centered Design Toolkit interviewing methodologies. The questionnaire has been designed around four main themes:

1. Demographics: mapping various informational elements, such as: age, gender, ethnicity, access on Internet, access on electricity, access on mobile phones, etc.

2. Environment: mapping out the existing environmental situation from the lens of the community, as well as what other institutions or organizations are intervening in this field.

3. Health: identifying various health symptoms from the environmental pollution.

4. Community interest and engagement: identifying the interest and motivation of community to involve in citizen science experimental initiative, and map out approximate numbers the community members can spend on various activity engagement.

All the interviews were audio-recorded, photographed and analysed, and a brief report was produced to inform the decisions and the design of the intervention in its experimental phase.

8 Salem, H. (2013, November 19). Kosovo pays a heavy toll for lack of reliable energy. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/nov/19/kosovo-energy-poverty-pollution-coal

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1.2.2 Issues found

Community members identified concerns around specific environmental issues and about the health effects associated with them.

Key areas of concern were air quality, water quality and soil pollution. The health effects were perceived as ranging from respiratory issues through to cancer.

These were cross-referenced with the most comprehensive and updated research available to the project team at that time, the ‘Kosovo - Country Environmental Analysis: Cost Assessment of Environmental Degradation, Institutional Review, and Public Environmental Expenditure Review’ published by the World Bank in 20139. The research supported the communities’ concerns and provided specific information about polluting substances and their sources, including

• NOx, PM from traffic

• NOx, PM, SO2 from the Kosovo A & B power plants

• Lead from former lead processing facilities (mostly near Mitrovica) and leaded petrol

The report also gives detailed epidemiological estimates regarding the health impacts.

For Science for Change Kosovo to successfully mobilise citizens to make a difference to any of these issues, it was necessary to find sensing methods accessible to the community. A comprehensive survey of pioneering community citizen science projects was carried out, including in depth interviews with the Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) project at University College London10, Mapping for Change11 and Global Community Monitor12.

The overlap of community concerns, research base, and accessible citizen science techniques indicated that air quality should be the initial focus, using techniques such as NOx and SO2 diffusion tubes and so-called ghost wipes for lead deposition.

9 Bank, T. W. (2013). Kosovo - Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) (No. 75029) (pp. 1–100). The World Bank. Retrieved from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/01/17485553/kosovo-country-environmental-analysis-kosovo-country-environmental-analysis-cea

10 https://www.ucl.ac.uk/excites

11 http://mappingforchange.org.uk/

12 http://www.gcmonitor.org/

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1.2.3 Technological requirements

The team was also aware of developments such as the Air Quality Egg and wanted to leverage low cost, Arduino based sensing to increase both take-up and impact of the sensing activities.

Contact was made with the emerging Smart Citizen project: 12 Smart Citizen Kits were purchased for deployment in the first phase, and a member of the Smart Citizen team participated in the project launch event, training members of Prishtina Hackerspace in the setup of the SCK. As SCK comes without any enclosure, Science for Change prototyped and tested a low cost, weather proof enclosure using materials available from local hardware stores.

A number of evaluations of the Air Quality Egg highlighted that participant disillusionment in these forms of participatory sensing was related to the lack of credibility of the measurements. Without credible calibration, the rising and falling of the graphs lacked any traction in terms of individual interpretation or collective campaigning. It was decided that Science for Change would co-locate SCK with NO2 diffusion tubes, so that a monthly average of SCK readings could be compared with the lab based analysis of the tubes to provide a baseline for interpretation.

Unfortunately the results of the first phase of measurement showed that the NO2 readings from the SCK could not be relied on. The data was extremely spiky and the variations showed no correlation with the NO2 results from the diffusion tubes. This caused some internal problems for Science for Change as both the core team and the volunteers had put considerable effort in to deploying the SCK13 and were disappointed that the readings didn’t tell them more about the air quality in their homes and neighbourhoods.

NO2

Despite disappointment with the SCK readings, the diffusion tubes had successfully demonstrated the existence of several NO2 hotspots in Prishtina where average levels far exceeded EU and WHO limit values, and which had not been identified by any statutory agency.

The project decided to commit to continuing and extending NO2 measurements, as NO2 levels are one of the most deadly components of air pollution: in the UK, government estimates indicate that 23,500 people die prematurely from NO2 pollution every year14.

13 Deployment of Smart Citizen Kits https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1451488458465993.1073741832.1423629027918603&type=1

14 Carrington, D. (2016, February 5). The truth about London’s air pollution. The Guardian. Retrieved from

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As a project and a community of practice, Science for Change believes that credible live readings from a device like SCK would greatly increase the measurability and likely impact of community NO2 monitoring.

Particulate Matter

Levels of particulate matter (PM) are the other major killer in urban air pollution15 and Science for Change made contact with the Environmental Research Group at King’s College, London, to seek advice about the potential for citizen science measurements of PM levels.

The TSI SidePak Personal Aerosol Monitor AM51016 was identified as an accessible device which was used by various participatory health & environmental research projects. However, because of the price it was only possible to purchase one device for Science for Change Kosovo.

This device is currently being deployed in the Prishtina pilot. During a walkshop at the Prishtina launch of the Making Sense, during the Science for Change Festival, Sidepak readings revealed that the levels of PM2.5 in the local shopping centre were as high as the levels in the middle of one of Prishtina’s major roads. The capacity of Science for Change to make an impact with regards to PM levels would be boosted by the availability of low cost PM2.5 sensing devices.

To summarise the current needs of the Prishtina pilots in relation to the evolution of the Smart Citizen Kit, we have identified the following issues:

• NO2 readings need to be stable and reliable (i.e. well correlated with measurements made by standards-compliant devices)

• This stability and reliability must apply in the field (i.e. under complex conditions of multiple pollutants and varying ambient conditions) and not just in the lab

• There should be a low cost and field tested recommendations for making enclosures from locally available resources (e.g. not relying on 3D printing capacity)

• There should be the ability to integrate low cost PM sensing, in particular PM2.5, under similar constraints of stability and reliability

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/05/the-truth-about-londons-air-pollution

15 Understanding the Health Impacts of Air Pollution in London: A project quantifying the health effects of PM2.5 and NO2 in London - Science Policy Group, King’s College Londonhttp://www.kcl.ac.uk/lsm/research/divisions/aes/research/ERG/research-projects/UnderstandingtheHealthIm-pactsofAirPollutioninLondon.aspx

16 http://www.tsi.com/SIDEPAK-Personal-Aerosol-Monitor-AM510/

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1.3 Barcelona1.3.1 Identification process

The case in Barcelona differs widely from the experiences inAmsterdam and Prishtina.

Unlike WAAG and PEN, the IAAC did not have an engaged community of interest prior to the kick off of the Making Sense project. For this reason, we conducted two parallel streams of research and action in order to identify both, the environmental issues that concern local communities and the challenges that users face when interacting with the Smart Citizen Kit and platform.

The first one aims to map existing matters of concern and their associated communities of interest. The second one aimed to collect data on users’ technical requirements. To achieve this goal we reached out to existing owners of SCKs (a community of practice) to collect data on their difficulties when interacting with the sensor kits and the platform.

1.3.2 Issues found

An initial step towards the identification of local “matters of concern”was to conduct two rapid ethnographic studies.

The first one comprised a review of official reports, local newspapers, magazines and blogs, published in the last three years, with the objective to find articles referring to local environmental issues. We found that environmental issues in Barcelona have tended to be discussed, primarily, in terms of noise pollution, humidity and damp, air quality, and preservation of green spaces (e.g. urban parks).

Additionally, we conducted field and desktop research to identify the existing grassroots organisations, ranging from neighbourhood associations to citizen movements, NGOs and cooperatives, among others, and mapped them on the territory in order to better understand how they connect to each other and to the local issues. The map17 can be seen online. Following, we created a database of 274 community groups18 (which is also available online) and categorised their main activity according to the emergent themes: environmental, social, infrastructure and services, cultural, educational, economical, health, and politics.

17 Community mapping: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1hXrstcSNcpEq1_PgoypL5a-JUbGQ

18 Communities database: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tmwiuxd0ruvl18g/BBDD_MAKING_SENSE.xlsx?dl=0

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We observed that themes are likely to intertwine and that groups who pursue environmental goals, for example, are often driven by societal or health concerns. This is an interesting insight as it inspires new ways of framing environmental action in relationship to other concerns that are also relevant to people. We are currently contacting with those organisations that have been identified as interested in environmental concerns and conducting face to face interviews to better understand how they may profit from the Making Sense activities to tackle their matters of concern.

Fig 1. Community Mapping

With the goal to identify which of the environmental concerns seemed to be more urgent to citizens in Barcelona, we conducted a rapid ethnography with a customised approach that we have described as city sarafi. Armed with cameras we engaged in a field trip covering the areas of the city that had been repeatedly associated to environmental issues: the Gothic quarter, Born, Poblenou and Barceloneta. We identified that in these neighbourhoods citizens are hanging posters and flags from their windows to express matters of concern (see pictures below). Apart from the predominant Catalan flags (which represent a political concern), a majority of signs referred to movements against mass tourism and noise levels, both apparently tightly related. We interviewed a number of citizens who further corroborated these concerns and provided insights on how they are affected by noise pollution.

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Noise pollution is a serious problem in many European cities and 40% of citizens in Barcelona are exposed to dangerous levels of noise19. 44% of calls to the local police are noise-related complaints, often triggered by the concentration of people in the public space. However, the main source of noise in urban environments is traffic (80%). Elevated environmental noise can cause both physiological and psychological threats from hearing impairment, hypertension, ischemic heart disease, annoyance, and sleep disturbance20. Furthermore, changes in the immune system and birth defects have been also associated to noise exposure.

As a result of this initial phase of identification we have decided to organise our first Making Sense Barcelona pilot around the issue of noise pollution, engaging with the affected citizens and the social organisations who voluntarily decide to join in. Moreover, we have been approached by a group within the Barcelona City Council that is currently working in the development of a new project called Superilles, or Superblocks in English21. The project designed by Barcelona City Council in collaboration with the Urban Ecology Agency aims to foster sustainable mobility, the use of public spaces, biodiversity, social cohesion, and a reduced ecological footprint. This will be achieved by promoting a new type of urban organisation in five macro-areas specially chosen for the experiment and by fostering citizen participation.

Fig 2. Balcony protesting

19 http://ecodes.org/notas-de-prensa/mas-del-40-de-los-barceloneses-conviven-con-niveles-de-rui-do-perjudiciales-para-la-salud#.V40jj5N96Rs

20 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1637786/

21 http://smartcity.bcn.cat/en/superblocks.html

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Fig 3. Balcony protesting

The Superblocks initiative provides an interesting opportunity to collaborate with citizens in the monitorisation of environmental factors to assess how the deployment of these new urban macro-areas may contribute to improving issues such as noise and air pollution.

1.3.3 Technological requirements

In order to begin identifying the key challenges that Smart Citizen users face, we conducted two phases of user research. We focused on the existing group of Smart Citizen users in Barcelona.

First, we distributed an online survey to community members using Google Forms. Second, we conducted a series of voluntary interviews with community members. The interviews took place over Google Hangouts, Skype, or telephone, and lasted between 10-20 minutes each. We selected participants for this user research based on individual’s’ experience with deploying the Smart Citizen Kit and/or having used the Smart Citizen online platform in the past. There were 18 responses to the survey and 6 interviewees, totaling 24 participants in all across both approaches. The participant batch also heavily skewed male. We believe this is a pre-existing gender bias in the technology community at large and is not a reflection of whom selected for the survey and interviews.

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Issues foundBoth the surveys and interviews revealed a set of recurrent challenges that were articulated consistently by the informants. Moreover, these findings echo previous studies that were reported in [Balestrini et al., 201522]. Following, we present the findings organised according to the emergent themes.

1. Context and purpose

Many participants reported that their main motivations for joining the Smart Citizen community were an interest in environmental monitoring, citizen science, civic engagement, and open hardware/software. However, people also reported that they stopped participating after a while because they felt a lack of purpose to continue contributing.

Unlike citizen science projects, self-organising communities need to negotiate common goals and shared purposes themselves. Pilots should provide social features for campaign organisation or methodologies to assist them in doing so.

2. Technological challenges

Although SCKs are designed to be easy to set up, users usually lack the skills to install, operate and maintain sensing technologies. An overwhelming majority of interviewees, and and sizeable proportion of survey participants reported that they had trouble setting up the kit. This is also the main reason why many participants report that they stop participating or decide to abandon the project. Based on the survey, the majority of participants did not have any previous experience with open hardware before receiving their Smart Citizen kit.

Moreover, we identified a strong need to provide support for calibration, which could be done both through an online platform and face to face technical meetups that, in turn, can foster social interactions and discussions leading to collective awareness.

3. Data sensemaking

As in many platforms of the like, in Smart Citizen the shared data is represented online in the form of a stream comprising lines and numbers. Most of our informants indicated that they struggled to make sense of such representations.

Some participants, on their own, researched the specifics of environmental standards to compare against their sensor kit’s readings, but the majority of participants articulated a desire to be able to understand the information they were helping produce. Participants suggested a variety of different ways to make sense of the data, spanning comparing

22 Balestrini, M., Diez, T., Marshall, P., Gluhak, A., & Rogers, Y. (2015) IoT Community Technologies: Leaving Users to Their Own Devices or Orchestration of Engagement?. EAI Endorsed Transactions on Internet of Things, 15, 1, EAI.

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the grassroots data with official meteorological data, to making the kit more of a “plug and play” system.

We suggest that a sense of meaningfulness can be supported by adopting inclusive methodologies such as co-design, allowing citizens to collaboratively build tools and develop sensemaking techniques (e.g community displays, data annotation and comparison). The Making Sense pilots should organize social and learning experiences where participants can engage in data experiments and co-design visualization platforms, physical displays or public performances.

4. Community

While few participants explicitly mentioned they had expectations of joining a sensing community upon embarking on the Smart Citizen project, a majority of interviewees mentioned they would have liked to attend meetups, events, and workshops.

Our findings in previous studies reported in [Balestrini et al., 2015] demonstrated that participatory sensing campaigns where members profited from social interactions, particularly in face to face settings, achieved larger levels of engagement and contributions.

To summarise, our findings regarding the Barcelona community needs suggest that:

• Social space and features: Pilots should provide social features for campaign organisation and social spaces for community members to meet, collaborate, discuss, plan and deploy collective action

• Onboarding tools: Pilots should develop resources and methods to assist in sensor set-up, allowing them to easily connect their kits and keep them contributing data. Moreover, citizens should be onboarded to the issue at stake for them to make informed decisions regarding what data the should be collecting, where and how.

• Support for calibration: Pilots should devise strategies to support calibration methods in order to ensure that the data contributed by citizens is as accurate as possible.

• Data sensemaking: Data annotation can help citizens to make sense of the data they collect. A journaling tool could help individuals augment their hard sensor data with soft data that provides context and meaning. The pilots should organise social and learning experiences where participants can engage in data experiments and co-design visualisation platforms, physical displays or data experiments.

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2TACKLING

COMMUNITY NEEDSThe aim of this section is to briefly describe the current state of the

Smart Citizen Kit (v1.1) and platform with regards to its technical performance and future developments, and to provide insights on

how these tools can be used in the context of Making Sense in order to tackle the community needs that were presented in section one.

The Smart Citizen platform has gone through a number of iterations and improvements since it was first deployed in Barcelona in 2013 (SCK 1.1), and later in Amsterdam in 2014 (SCK 1.1). Although there have been advancements that increased the performance of the sensing devices and the data platform, there are still a number of limitations that need to be taken into account when planning the pilots and engaging non-expert participants.

We here also provide details regarding the pipeline of future developments in the system.

2.1 Measuring air qualityAs pointed out in the previous section, this remains the biggest challenge for Smart Citizen. The current version (SCK 1.1), which will be the only available kit until the release of version 1.5 in the final quarter of 2016, still presents issues regarding data reliability.

An external assessment23 produced by researchers has demonstrated that compared to professional equipment, SCK CO sensor is very accurate. However, the NO2 sensors have sometimes tended to retrieve inaccurate data.

23 http://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/aq-spec/field-evaluations/smart-citizen-kit---field-evalua-tion.pdf?sfvrsn=2

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For example, there have been cases when many negative, zero and extremely high positive (off-scale) NO2 values were recorded, although no correlation between these extreme NO2 data-points and RH (or T) was found. The conclusions of the report state:

·       Overall, the CO data measured using the SCK sensors correlate well with the corresponding FRM data.

·       The intra-model variability between the three SCK devices tested was moderate

·    The current version of the SCK does not provide reliable NO2 concentrations. A more thorough data analysis will be conducted to elucidate this problem

·   Chamber testing is necessary to fully evaluate the performance of the three SCKs over different environmental conditions

2.2 Data sensemakingBeyond data quality and calibrations discussions, it is important to note that the air quality sensors in SCK1.1 retrieve data to the platform in KOhms values.

This raw sensor data still requires to be converted to ppm for participants to make sense of.

Future stepsSmart Citizen will release a new add-on supporting Alphasense Electrochemical CO, NO2 and O3 sensors, which are more reliable and sold pre-calibrated. To support data sense making, we will include a data conversion feature to retrieve values in parts per million,- ppm (CO) and ppb (NO2). The cost of the SCK 1.5 will remain the same as the previous versions. Furthermore, the Smart Citizen team is currently prototyping an add-on for sensors that measure Particle Mass Concentrations (PMC2.5 and PMC10). These developments will be realised by the final quarter of the year.

OpportunitiesWe recommend that pilots focusing on air quality communicate these challenges and limitations to participants in order to manage expectations. Also, inviting experts who can assist in data sensemaking processes as well as with the technical requirements can support community engagement and sensemaking. An opportunity here is to work with communities of practices to develop low cost calibration methods as a social activity.

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Additionally, as described in D2.3, the new data platform enables the integration of external data sets, which means that we could integrate existing available data from official monitoring stations or other sensors, for example.

2.3 Measuring noise pollution

It is possible to measure sound levels with the SCK1.1 accurately.

However, these sensors are more suitable for outdoor contexts as they are sensitive to levels beyond 50 decibels. This means that the sensor will not register noises under such range.

Data sensemakingSound data is retrieved in decibels (DBs), which is very straightforward and easy to understand. DBs measure sound pressure difference between the average local pressure and the pressure in the sound wave. It’s the standard for audio/noise measures. A quiet library is below 40dB, your house is around 50dB and a diesel truck in your street 90dB.

Future stepsThe SCK1.5 will include better quality noise levels. These will be suitable to measure indoor levels (beyond 35dB) and profit from improved calibration.

OpportunitiesParticipants have been able to produce visualizations (Amsterdam) with SCK1.1 data and use them to detect room occupancy at office buildings during night (London).  We can use the SCK1.1 to measure how noisy an area of the city is compared to others. We can measure whether the noise created by a construction site in a residential area is beyond the acceptable levels.

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2.4 Measuring temperature and humidity

These sensors are well calibrated and we have not had complaints from users. They provide reliable data although this changes significantly if the sensors are deployed indoors or outdoors. It is important that users provide this information when setting up their sensors.

Data sensemakingAir temperature measures how hot or cold the air is. It is the most commonly measured weather parameter. Air temperature is dependent on the amount and strength of the sunlight hitting the earth, and atmospheric conditions, such as cloud cover and humidity, which trap heat. SCKs provide data in degree Celsius (°C), which is a standard measure. Relative humidity is a measure of the amount of moisture in the air relative to the total amount of moisture the air can hold. For instance, if the relative humidity was 50%, then the air is only half saturated with moisture. Data is provided as a percentage, which is a standard.

OpportunitiesParticipants can use these sensors to track environmental changes. They can also identify how external factors produce variations in temperature or humidity. For example, it there’s a large store right by a flat then air-condition equipment could produce a heat wave that affects temperature levels in the flat. Participants could also demonstrate how temperature raises in urban areas due to increased vehicle circulation.

2.5 Measuring light

SCK light sensor is reliable and there have been no complaintsfrom users.

Data sensemakingSCKs provide light values in lux (lx), which is the SI unit of illuminance and luminous emittance, measuring luminous flux per unit area. It is equal to one lumen per square metre. In photometry, this is used as a measure of the intensity, as perceived by the human eye, of light that hits or passes through a surface. For example, a full moon clear night is around 1 lux, inside an office building you usually have 400 lux and a bright day can be more than 20000 lux.

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Future stepsSCK1.5 of will include a new sensor for measuring ultraviolet light.

OpportunitiesAlthough it was not identified by our communities as an issue, light pollution is an important phenomenon that remains largely underexplored in participatory sensing interventions. Light pollution is the alteration of light levels in the outdoor environment (from those present naturally) due to man-made sources of light. Indoor light pollution is such alteration of light levels in the indoor environment due to sources of light, which compromises human health. It is most severe in highly industrialized, densely populated areas, due to the abundance of building exterior and interior lighting, advertising, commercial properties, offices, factories, streetlights, and illuminated venues. Beyond certain levels, light pollution has been associated to detrimental effects both for humans and the environment. Measuring light with SCKs participants can reveal light pollution in specific urban areas. Awareness with regards to light pollution could lead to better management of urban lightning and policy changes regarding street signage.

2.6 Other features

3D printed enclosuresSCKs are hard to deploy outdoors without a suitable enclosure that can both protect the sensors from environmental conditions like rain and enable an internal airflow that doesn’t affect the measurements. The team has designed and developed a fully open source 3D printable solution that can be both purchased via Fab Lab Barcelona (aprox. €45 + VAT) or downloaded for printing via Thingiverse24. Unlike other existing solutions, this enclosure provides improved aesthetics and rain proofing.

SD cardAll SCKs include a SD card that can store data when the sensor is offline. This is a useful feature if participants want to measure environmental factors in areas where there is no coverage. Moreover, saving data in an SD card rather than relaying it to the Internet can save battery power. These data can then be downloaded in different formats such as in a spreadsheet for further analysis and uploaded to the online data platform.

24 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:236976

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Solar panelSCKs can be powered via a small solar panel. Such energy source can be purchased online or, in specific situations, bought via Fab Lab Barcelona. It is important to note that import taxes can significantly increase the price of the panels and this is why we do not include this piece in the kit by default.  Using a solar panel allows users to deploy SCKs in areas where there is no access to the electrical grid. This creates interesting opportunities for participatory sensing interventions in rural settings.

Data visualisation platformThe new Smart Citizen data platform is faster and more robust than the initial version. It now provides an extended and more detailed API25, which allows full control of all the features available in the platform.

·       Data comparison

There’s a new feature that supports data comparison between pairs of sensors, which was previously requested by users.  This is very useful if participants want to compare measurements coming from sensors deployed in different locations or to check for deviations in specific sensors.

·       Tags

It also supports the creation of tags, which creates opportunities to group sensors enabling easier exploration, identification and comparison. For example, we will create the #MakingSenseEU tag to label all the sensors deployed during the project. More tags for subgroups like #MakingSenseAmsterdam, #MakingSenseBarcelona, and #MakingSensePristina, or thematic collections such as #MakingSenseAirQuality can be created. When creating a tag, the admininstrator can assign a text to provide information on the collection.

Android AppThe Smartcitizen app for Android lets users search SCKs worldwide and visualise their data in real time. Users can also create or log in to their Smart Citizen account and check their own Kits. The app can be accessed via the Google Play Store26.

25 http://developer.smartcitizen.me/

26 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fablabbcn.smartcitizen

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3CONCLUSION

In this report we presented the processes followed by each pilot partner to identify community needs, both regarding environmental

issues and technical requirements.

The aim is to ensure that the pilot interventions address real concerns from communities at the grassroots level and that the technical requirements expressed by communities are addressed in future developments.

Section one described how WAAG in Amsterdam, PEN in Prishtina, and IAAC in Barcelona followed different approaches to engage with local communities in order to identify environmental matters of concern. In all cases the process of identifying issues involved methods deployed at the grassroots level, from face to face interviews with residents to informal gatherings and citi safaris, and contact with local authorities and/or official reports.

This identification process has proven useful to inform decisions about which issues should be addressed during the pilots. While the first pilots in Amsterdam and Prishtina will focus on air quality, Barcelona will focus on noise pollution.

The identification of technical requirements showed the many challenges associated with empowering citizens with low-cost open source sensing devices and data platforms. Much work needs to be undertaken to successfully onboard citizens so they can effectively use these tools, difficulties around data sensemaking indicate that new ways of visualising and annotating data must be explored, and that social features should be put into place to foster sustained and meaningful engagement. The pilots should also engage citizens to reflect on the tensions between doing science, which entails a process of authentic discovery that starts by asking situated questions and assessing methods, and the mere act of sensing and collecting data.

In section two we described the current status of the Smart Citizen kit and data platform and provided some recommendations on how to use these tools to address the community needs. We also described how future developments aim to directly address some of the requirements raised by the community members in Amsterdam, Prishtina and Barcelona. The information presented in this section is complementary to deliverable 2.3 “Documentation on firmware to integrate sensors”.

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