After three years of working hand in hand with different groups of citizens, I-CHANGE is approaching its final stretch, and some citizens have been harvesting the fruits of their efforts. Over the past three years, the I-CHANGE Dublin Living Lab has empowered citizens with key environmental topics for this city: air pollution and sustainable transport. Specifically, citizens, schools, and local organisations have been empowered to monitor air quality and traffic, analyse data, and implement meaningful changes to reduce their carbon footprints.
On Wednesday 25 September 2024, Anna Molter and Juan Quintero-Marin from the Dublin Living Lab gave a talk called “From Awareness to Action: Citizen-Led Climate Initiatives in the I-CHANGE project” to the UCD Citizen Science Community of Practice (COP). The goal of this community is to provide a forum for UCD staff, researchers, and students to engage with Citizen Science in their research and teaching through a network of practitioners and knowledge sharing. Key to this is fostering a culture of collaboration and openness.
In this talk, Juan and Anna shared key insights and discussed successes, challenges and the future of citizen-driven climate action in Dublin. The talk showcased how Dublin’s communities are turning climate knowledge into impactful action. Participants discovered how citizens have been monitoring air quality and traffic, analysed data, and implemented meaningful changes to reduce their carbon footprint.
This event was an opportunity to connect Dublin Living Lab members with the wider citizen science community in Ireland. It also provided an opportunity to showcase and share some of I-CHANGE’s latest outputs such as the serious game and the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) with the general public.
The event gathered dozens of people through a hybrid meeting inside the James Joyce Library and via Zoom. Final questions and discussion were around topics such as the existing gaps in environmental data being collected in Dublin, whether there is a need for validation of the data collected by citizen science, and the importance of similar projects in Europe that are focused on climate change adaptation and not only on climate change mitigation, among others.
The I-CHANGE team is deeply grateful to Jane Nolan and Liz Bruton, founders of the UCD Citizen Science Community of Practice, and the network of citizens who attended the event and fostered dialogue on these relevant issues.
