On the 10th of October, Gert-Jan Steeneveld from the partner Wageningen University represented I-CHANGE in the EU meeting for the 21st Week of Regions and Cities in Brussels. In particular, the project was presented during the “Citizen science and co-design tools for cities” session, where 8 demonstration tables from a collection of EU Green Deal projects were present.
The European Week of Regions and Cities is an annual four-day event during which cities and regions showcase their capacity to create growth and jobs, implement European Union cohesion policy, and prove the importance of the local and regional level for good European governance. The “Citizen science and co-design tools for cities” was an event co-organised with other EU Green Deal projects with the aim of demonstrating how citizen science and co-design tools can encourage local communities to become active participants in creating more sustainable and liveable cities. Overall, the event was well attended, seeing the participation of around 100 stakeholders.
The I-CHANGE contribution, focused on three themes:
- An illustration of sensors used in the Amsterdam Living Lab, i.e. the Meteotracker sensors that can be mounted to a bike or installed on a car. They record temperature and humidity and by that map a temperature pattern of the city. In addition, The NetAtmo weather station that records indoor temperature for an indoor heat study in 100 houses in Amsterdam. Finally, the Smart Citizens Kit to measure indoor and outdoor air quality, and their visualizations through the connected web platforms.
- An illustration of a successful crowdsourcing activity during a heat wave in September 2023 in Amsterdam Living Lab. The Living Lab research team aimed to collect indoor air temperatures to learn how fast outdoor heat reaches the indoor bedrooms and sleeping rooms. They collected ~575 observations of indoor temperatures within about 48h through a straightforward web platform where citizens add their indoor temperature, a photo of the thermometer and indicate by a traffic light their ability to cope with heat. The main research strategy, the design of the web platform and the most important results have been shown, which was that the mean reported indoor temperature amounted to 27.5ºC, which is rather high.
- As an illustration of fruitful collaboration between municipalities and the research community, Gert-Jan also shared the main principles behind the AMS-Institute in Amsterdam. AMS-Institute was founded by Wageningen University, Delft University and MIT to promote research and technical solutions the city of Amsterdam is facing in the field of climate resilience, energy, circularity, traffic and more. The AMS-Institute builds connections between scientists, city planners, citizen communities in Amsterdam, and their approach builds on the cycle of Analyse, Design and Engineering (implementation). As an illustrative example the rain water collection devices just implemented in the Hortus Botanicus were shown.
