Project Reports
I-CHANGE produced numerous reports (deliverables) documenting the methodologies, strategies, and achievements realised during the project. These documents provide essential information and outputs related to specific I-CHANGE objectives and actions.
Knowledge Synthesis on Climate Change and Sustainable Behaviours
Global and local challenges related with climate change and socio-economic and cultural context (Deliverable 1.1)
Published: August 2022
This report synthesises current major global and local challenges regarding climate change (CC), extreme weather impacts and evaluation of hydro-meteorological risks, based on the existing climate projections and from available literature and open access environmental, natural and climatological data. It establishes the base profile specific to each I-CHANGE target city on which to build on solutions and Living Labs (LL) set-up or management, namely Bologna and Genoa (Italy), Barcelona (Spain), Dublin (Ireland), Hasselt (Belgium), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Jerusalem (Israel) and Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso).
Guidelines to promote the engagement and awareness raising of citizens (Deliverable 1.2)
This report is based on a State-of-the-Art literature review on citizen engagement and awareness creation in context with Living Labs conducting citizen science for behaviour and social change. While a significant number of papers are referred to in this document, the more systematic review of papers was limited to 38 papers that were identified as most representative for creating an overview of the most pressing issues related to the I-CHANGE project. The goal of this guideline is to help strengthen citizen and community engagement in Living Labs that conduct citizen science activities and to foster awareness creation that aims towards behaviour change and just transitions.
The report provides a brief introduction to conceptualizations and key terms relevant to the Living Labs, such as citizen science, citizen engagement, awareness creation, as well as a few representative examples of the theories, models, and approaches developed to promote social change. Then, it describes the methods used in the literature review and presents the findings and analysis of the identified barriers to and enablers for citizen engagement and awareness creation aiming for behaviour change. It also includes a brief description of potential co-benefits and co-harms, a new conceptual framework approach to fostering transitions, and it discusses the findings and recommended next steps.
Based on the findings, three main clusters of drivers were identified to help generate a more comprehensive overview of the factors that need to be taken into consideration when planning and conducting participatory citizen science research in the I-CHANGE Living Labs for social change:
- Research project components
- Research process characteristics
- Strengthening community capacity, form the foundation for the I-CHANGE Just Transitions Framework.
Each of the cluster categories consists of a thematically arranged set of motivational drivers for engagement that form a set of criteria that can help plan more equitable research.
The expectation is to help start thinking about how to design and conduct more equitable, inclusive, and collaborative citizen science that will help create awareness and promote behavioural change.
European and local perspective on participatory research (Deliverable 1.3)
Published: July 2022
This deliverable reports on social media analysis in regard to citizen science (participatory research) and perceptions on risk of climate change, but also on the Just Transition. In particular, Text Mining solutions and social media analytics helped to derive an understanding of different perspectives. The social media stream was collected and displayed in a dashboard which could be accessed and used by the I-CHANGE consortium. Therefore, the Deliverable provides guidance for the I-CHANGE partners on how to use the dashboard and how to analyse the data it contains. The capacity building is further supported with example case studies to enlarge the imagination of potential uptake of results.
The intended usage of current and future results from the social media analysis can be incorporated to support the identification of indicators, to complement interactions between Living Labs and their stakeholders, to implement potential social sensing activities, to enhance communication on project events and outcomes and to identify projects dealing with specific topics or for market analyses on recently published tools.
Evaluation framework for the analysis of behavioural changes (Deliverable 1.4)
Published: October 2022
This Deliverable reports on results achieved to build a tool for sensing and evaluating the impacts of behavioural changes in climate change related challenges in urban contexts.
The work was based on the results of a survey conducted in four I-CHANGE Living Labs, namely Amsterdam, Bologna, Dublin and Hasselt. These Living Labs represent the research field taken as a benchmark to build citizen science initiatives and activities that can contribute to a shift of behaviour toward more sustainable lifestyles.
Nevertheless, this report also aims at building communities and citizen capacities regarding climate change impact at city level. In this context, it provides guidance for the I-CHANGE partners on how to ameliorate and make effective stakeholder and citizen engagement initiatives in the activities planned within each Living Lab.
Tools to analyze and evaluate carbon and environmental footprint (Deliverable 1.5)
Published: April 2022
The deliverable aims to provide an overview of various types of footprints and environmental impact indicators and then review existing personalized carbon and environmental footprint calculators in detail with a viewpoint to assess their suitability for use in I-CHANGE Living Labs (LLs). Additionally, the deliverable also discussed a few macro-scale modelling methodologies and simulation frameworks that can help assess the impacts of changed behavior on climate and the environment.
Environmental footprints and indicators to measure impacts are considered alternative methodologies to assess the impacts of human activities on the environment. The deliverable provided an overview of both of them in detail. With certain information collected from the I-CHANGE living labs about their activities, expertise, focus areas, tools and sensors used to collect data in the past and their planning during the I-CHANGE project, the preliminary proposition of related footprints and indicators for each living lab is developed. Because of the universal nature of Carbon footprint and also their wide availability and acceptance, the deliverable carried out an extensive review of existing open-access personalized carbon footprint calculators (in both forms as a smartphone app and web-based calculators). The Multi-criteria analysis approach is used to obtain the list of a few most suitable calculators that score best in all major criteria. The criteria used for their scoring are; 1) calculation basis (clear explanation of the calculation methodology), 2) consideration of a wide range of input categories (including transport, consumption patterns of food, goods and services, recycling behavior etc.), 3) Balancing of the questionnaire in terms of asking information that is readily available to the users, 4) Regional-global transferability of the tool, 5) output styles and strength of information, 5) user interaction/engagement consideration. High weightage is given to criteria 3 and 5 while performing the analysis because working with citizens in a living lab environment requires the use of tools that have these key features. Calculators that have been developed by government organizations are more robust and optimal to use in living labs (e.g. Sitra, WWF etc.). Apart from that Consumer footprint calculator is also discussed in detail as it provides output in terms of effects on impact category indicators. Within macro-scale assessment models, models related to personal mobility, energy consumption, air quality and climate change are discussed. A few selected models based on their relevance for the I-CHANGE project in each domain are discussed in detail along with their data requirements, outputs and their integration with each other to help analyze the translation of the effects of policy scenarios from one domain to another.
Within the deliverable, it is also attempted to link the content with tasks/activities of other work packages in the project. For example, the discussion carried out about carbon footprint calculators and their suitability directly supports task 4.4 of work package (WP) 4, where there is an intention to develop the project’s own carbon footprint calculator. Additionally, footprints and indicators mentioned in the 2 nd Chapter of the deliverable along with their mapping for each living lab are also an important output of this deliverable as it will pave way for designing data collection and citizen science activities within a living lab in such a manner that these footprint/indicators can be assessed. Together this will support various tasks in WP 2 and 3. Also, discussion of macro-scale models is mentioned in a manner that will provide support to tasks 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 in WP3.
Evaluation of available sensing technology and tools (Deliverable 1.6)
Published: April 2022
This report summarises the state of the art sensing technologies to be used in citizen science projects.
It is mainly intended for the I-CHANGE consortium members to learn about the application and quality of the citizen science sensors used in the project and to have a clear overview of all measurements available in all the I-CHANGE Living Labs. Indeed, it indicates seven meteorology-related sensors and three air quality-related sensors for use in citizen science projects. In addition, it aims to inform citizens and stakeholders involved in the I-CHANGE Living Labs about the sensing technologies and their strengths and weaknesses.
Ethical guide (Deliverable 1.7)
Published: September 2023
Ethical aspects are an integral part for any type of research. Individual researchers, research projects and research institutions have responsibilities for ensuring that their research is responsible and complies with recognised ethical norms and guidelines. Research that concerns or engages laypeople has special requirements conducting ethically responsible research.
This document introduces the ethical protocol to be followed in the I-CHANGE project. It describes the principles of research ethics and research integrity in citizen science, and introduces a procedure covering the ethical aspects to be considered in various phases of the project, from engaging the participants to data collection and management. As the specificity of the ethical aspect may differ from one context to another, the procedure also lists additional literature and useful links for further information. In that sense the protocol does not provide answers to every single issue that might be faced, but rather the general norms and rules.
Methodological guide for citizen engagement in Living Labs in I-CHANGE with the description of learning platform (Deliverable 1.8)
Published: April 2022
This report presents the methodological guide for the Living Labs (LL) that was developed as part of the I-CHANGE project. It details the process that was used to produce the methodological guide, including the rationale for developing a methodological guide, as well as the initial concepts and the co-design process with the project partners. It is important to note that the methodological guide is an interactive, digital tool developed for internal use and it provides users with a learning environment that allows them to place each section of material within the overall context and structure of the methodological guide, but also to easily move and cross-reference between sections.
The document describes the sources and the process used to create the content of the methodological guide and gives an overview of: What is a Living Lab, How to set up a living lab, Practical advice, Living Lab during a pandemic. It also describes the learning platform created for the I-CHANGE project and the implementation of the methodological guide to the learning platform. Finally, it reflects on the development of the learning platform, relative to the initial concepts and ideas.
Living Lab Setup and Management
Assessment of risks and potentials concerning the engagement of stakeholders and citizens (Deliverable 2.1)
Published: August 2022
Motivation and common goals are key to involve and engage citizens in scientific experiments regarding their climate footprint and everyday activities over a period of several years. This deliverable synthesises the efforts of the I-CHANGE project and in particular the eight I-CHANGE Living Labs, to ensure motivation and good engagement practices. The central purpose is to identify risks and potentials concerning the engagement of stakeholders and citizens in I-CHANGE.
The report is meant to be a substantial guidance for Living Lab partners to minimise non-technical risks and increase the chances that potentials for good engagement are exploited. As such, the main recipients of this deliverable are the I-CHANGE partners that are involved with the facilitation of a Living Lab.
Local implementation plans for each partner city (Deliverable 2.2)
This report presents the local implementation plans of the eight I-CHANGE Living Labs (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bologna, Dublin, Genoa, Hasselt, Jerusalem and Ouagadougou) at an early stage of the Living Lab activities. The plans are a key to support the eight I-CHANGE Living Lab objectives and activities and have been developed in coordination and in parallel with the local communication plans of each Living Lab presented as a separate report. Besides the Introduction, Methodology and Conclusions, the report is divided in two main parts, one devoted to show each implementation plan, and the second one, built in basis to the previous information, that tries to summarise and compare the eight implementation plans.
The first part includes the main challenge/s of the Living Lab, starting by the planned interventions and citizen science activities; the planned schedule/timeline; the technical and non-technical associated risks; the administrative and community engagement procedures to be followed; the indicators to calculate the social and scientific impact; the proposals to ensure continuity; results of the first Living Lab workshop; the activities or methods for sharing feedback to the Living Lab participants; and the scientific communication plan. The second one synthesises the main aspects of each implementation plan and compares them, starting with the main challenges and the objectives to cope with them. The number of stakeholders, qualitative and quantitative indicators, methodologies for engaging citizens and citizen science projects are compared in order to identify the most common ones, as well as its robustness and weakness. Scientific aspects like the proposed analysis and modelling, dissemination plans and sensors that will be used are also considered.
Framework for monitoring tools for I-CHANGE citizen science activities (Deliverable 2.3)
Published: October 2022
The engagement of citizens in living lab activities requires deliberate efforts aimed at heightening motivation, overcoming barriers to participation, and ensuring effective and useful data collection. While citizen science is a matter of the capacity to facilitate social and structural enablers for participation, the success of a living lab also relies heavily on the technical components that citizens are expected to use. The I-CHANGE Living Labs are no exception, which is why efforts are being made to ensure that the applied monitoring tools are designed with the end-users in mind.
This report offers a framework with which the I-CHANGE project may co-test and co-develop monitoring tools during Living Lab activities. The framework combines lessons learned from the projects WeCount (Citizens Observing UrbaN Transport), iSCAPE (Improving the Smart Control of Air Pollution in Europe) and OPERANDUM (OPEn-air laboRatories for Nature baseD solUtions to Manage hydro-meteo risks) with academic sources and initial insight activities carried out during the Co-design of monitoring tools activities of the project.
Special focus on Living Labs experience in near-EU countries (Deliverable 2.4)
Published: January 2023
The report discusses the main strategies and approaches of Living Labs outside of Europe, with a focus on establishing and operating citizen science activities through examples from around the world. The report also examines the experiences of I-CHANGE’s Living Labs outside of Europe in Ouagadougou and Jerusalem and compares them to other I-CHANGE Living Labs with the aim of learning and transferring knowledge between different lab’s activities.
The overall purpose is to study and implement the main approaches that were brought into action in other places, and to build strong connections between science and citizens via citizen science activities.
Enhancing Monitoring Opportunities through Citizen Science
Prototype of fully integrated behavioral simulator (Deliverable 3.1)
Published: April 2023
This deliverable as part of WP 3 task 3.1 (Exploring behavioural changes through numerical simulations) is having two major aims pertaining respectively to sub task 3.1.1 (Model developments and enrichment) and 3.1.2 (Evaluation and prediction of lifestyle scenarios). As part of task 3.1.1, the deliverable presents the Activity-based model (FEATHERS), its complete structure, data requirements and transferability mechanism to be able to applied in other cities. The version of FEATHERS reported in this deliverable follows an econometric approach where discrete choice models are estimated and arranged in a hierarchical manner to predict the entire daily activity-travel schedule of a synthetic individual of a given city/region. Additionally, a method is developed to integrate in-home activities scheduling alongside out-of-home activities schedules. The methodological details presented in this deliverable to enrich activity-travel schedule with in-home activities is novel and based on the idea that there exist interactions in relation to individual’s participation decisions between in-home and out-of-home activities. This is given by an addition of in-home and out-of-home activities time allocation model at the top of the hierarchy and then predicting activity-travel schedules that preserve the time allocated for in-home activities. Furthermore, the allocated time for in-home activities is then distributed in to 6-broardly classified activities by estimating models to predict their types and durations using available time use surveys. The estimated model parameters are then further calibrated using aggregate time use statistics available for Belgium, Italy and Dublin to ascertain results from the model in close agreement with the behaviour of individuals in these countries.
Apportionment of carbon footprint and greenhouse gases (Deliverable 3.2)
This Deliverable describes the methodologies applied to compute carbon footprint and short-lived climate forcers emissions using driving forces data gathered within I-CHANGE Living Labs (LLs) activities (WP2, e.g. Task 2.2.1 “Constructing the local implementation plans” and Task 3.4 “Citizen science experiments in the LLs”) and traffic numerical simulations conducted as part of Task 3.1 of the project (“ Exploring behavioral changes through numerical simulations”, described in Deliverable 3.1 “Prototype of fully integrated behavioral simulator”).
More specifically, this deliverable provides information on the following major aspects:
- The available data at local LL level and Task 3.1 numerical outputs utilized as input for carbon footprint modelling and pollutants emissions.
- The methodology used for calculation of Carbon footprint, other climate forcers and air pollutants modelling.
- The results of the application of the methodology to LLs case studies.
- The retrieval of official data about overall source of emissions and air quality in the areas of interest.
- The E2 GovCmty model personalization.
Apportionment of environmental footprint (Deliverable 3.3)
The activities described in this deliverable are aimed to compute environmental footprint using driving forces data collected within LLs activities (WP2 and Task 3.4 “Citizen science experiments in the LLs”) and traffic simulations conducted (Task 3.1 “Exploring behavioral changes through numerical simulations” of the project, see Deliverable 3.1 “Prototype of fully integrated behavioral simulator”).
This deliverable provides information on the following major aspects:
- The available LLs data and Task 3.1 output used as input for environmental footprint modelling.
- The definition of the methodology used for environmental footprint modelling with a selection of air pollution and biometeorological footprint indicators appropriate to the activities of the LLs in the project.
- The results of the application of the methodology to LLs case studies.
- The E2GovCmty model personalization.
Impact of behavioral changes on CO2, GHGs, SLCFs, and APs concentrations (Deliverable 3.4)
Impact of behavioral changes on global and local climate (Deliverable 3.5)
This report showcases the development and application of a novel methodology aiming to investigate the impact of behavioral changes on climate change mitigation, with a specific focus on the urban environment and thermal extreme events. To this scope, high-resolution numerical simulations are conducted with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model in an innovative methodological framework grounded on an event-based dynamic downscaling technique, utilizing a biased corrected multi-model ensemble for the climatic projections. In this way, we can analyze how climate change will influence the occurrences of extreme heat events in future scenarios, considering both the near (2025-2049) and far (2075-2100) future.
The results reported in this Deliverable can be helpful for the I-CHANGE Living Labs to enhance communications and discussions between several stakeholders, as well as to achieve the specific goals of the Living Labs and the overall goals of the I-CHANGE project of raising awareness of the impacts of climate change on thermal discomfort within urban environments, which can be considered as a potential means to motivate citizens to shift to more pro-environmental and climate-friendly behaviors.
Observation Integration and Interoperability of DataMonitoring Opportunities
I-CHANGE Environmental Impact Hub Architecture (Deliverable 4.1)
Published: August 2023
The Deliverable aims to describe the architecture of the Environmental Impact Hub (EIH), i.e., the I-CHANGE integrated hub collecting data, tools and initiatives for citizen engagement. Citing the EU LC-GD-10-3-2020 call ([1]subtopic 2): “Citizen science can strongly contribute to the delivery of environmental data with a significant potential for further broad use, including contributing to improving relevant European policies.”,“Actions should include the development and/or improvement of devices (…) taking into account the interoperability and exchange of future and existing data collected”. With these goals in mind, the I-CHANGE consortium focused on the improvement of availability, interoperability and usability of collected data at a broad scale. The EIH has the ambition to enhance data sharing, management and processing, ensuring interoperability and usability of heterogeneous data.
This report presents the I-CHANGE vision for enabling data interoperability and connecting the I-CHANGE project with the relevant European initiatives on environmental and earth observation data sharing. The EIH is conceived as a participatory platform collecting observational data from heterogeneous sources, data processed through numerical models, software, apps and more in general tools and information derived from all citizen science actions/initiatives co-designed in the I-CHANGE Living Labs (LLs). At the same time, I-CHANGE wants to both exploit and contribute to the major initiatives on data sharing, interacting with GEOSS, the European Data Spaces and other relevant data infrastructures: the EIH accounts also for this ambition.
I-CHANGE Environmental Impact Hub Interfaces Documentation (Deliverable 4.3)
The I-CHANGE project aims to provide a hub collecting data, tools and initiatives for citizen engagement. Such Environmental Impact Hub (EIH) has the ambition to realize a data hub to effectively share, manage and process data while ensuring interoperability and usability of heterogeneous data. The EIH implements machine-to-machine interaction for supporting the development of desktop and mobile applications and for system integration, through dedicated service interfaces and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Since application developers have different expertise and requirements, three different ways of interacting with the EIH are implemented. They are not mutually exclusive, although each method targets a specific kind of developer or development situation.
The first way is using standard geospatial interfaces. Many developers are experts in geospatial interoperability and have expertise in de-iure or de-facto standards like OGC and ISO ones or OpenSearch specifications. In some cases, they would like to connect using standard interfaces existing applications to the EIH to access more datasets. For these reasons, the EIH exposes a set of standard interfaces that a developer can directly access. The second way is using a Web API. This is a JavaScript library that simplifies interaction with EIH from the typical web application development platform: HTML5 + JavaScript + CSS. The third way is using a RESTful API. It allows accessing the main EIH features in a simple way by exchanging JSON objects through HTTP Request and Responses, according to the HTTP method contracts. The RESTful API allows interaction with the EIH from every application environment, including web applications such as web portals.
Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation
Communication and dissemination strategy (Deliverable 5.1)
Published: September 2023
This report defines the initial communication and dissemination strategy of the I-CHANGE project and establishes impact measurement instruments and strategies for their success. It is intended to be a strategic and operative guide for all I-CHANGE partners in regard to the communication and dissemination of project activities, results and outputs and when speaking about or on behalf of the project. Its aim is to provide the project team with targeted information in order to coordinate, align and efficiently implement outreach activities. The overall goal is to pave the ground and facilitate the wide knowledge and use of projects’ results and with this make a concrete contribution to achieving the European Green Deal goals on reducing its net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 (compared to 1990 levels).
The strategy defines the projects’ unique value proposition, the high-level communication and dissemination objectives and a common understanding of audiences to be reached and collaborate with, formulates key messages, describes the planned tools and activities (referencing them to the main target audiences) with a related implementation plan and responsibilities and presents how communication and dissemination impact will be evaluated, including a set of Key Performance Indicators. It also gives an outlook on the general communication strategy for the eight I-CHANGE Living Labs. Since especially in a later phase of the project communication and dissemination will be closely linked to boost the uptake of results and with this to sustainability, this strategy is closely linked to the Business Plan which presents the exploitation strategy of the I-CHANGE project.
Living Labs communication strategy (Deliverable 5.2)
Published: October 2022
In this report we present the local communication plans of the eight I-CHANGE Living Labs (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bologna, Dublin, Genoa, Hasselt, Jerusalem and Ouagadougou), with the status of M12 of the project, so at an early stage of the Living Lab activities. In addition to this, we describe the methodology for their development as well as the supporting documents and activities provided at project level. We also give an outlook on the next steps and planned updates.
The local communication plans are meant to support the eight I-CHANGE Living Lab partners and the local implementation organisations in achieving their planned results by planning the communication to their main audiences. Therefore, each plan includes, for the respective Living Lab, in regard to planned communication: the goal and objectives, the target audiences, key messages, planned communication tools and materials, stakeholder and networks to be involved, a preliminary timeline (focusing on the first activities), roles and tasks as well a first indication on the monitoring process of local communication activities.
They were developed in coordination and in parallel with the Living Lab local implementation plans presented in D2.2 and they are closely related and integrated into the overall I-CHANGE communication and dissemination strategy presented in D5.1.
Business plan (Deliverable 6.1)
This report constitutes the first version of the I-CHANGE business plan which is structured in two parts: the first one consists of the business plan itself, while the second one presents the exploitation plan. In particular, it introduces planned exploitable results of the project, their exploitation strategy including a timeframe; a regular internal screening process will ensure the adoption of newly identified results in the exploitation activities.
Ethics Requirements and Data Management
Guidebook on ethics requirements (Deliverable 7.2)
Published: February 2022
This document provides a guide to the Consortium and it ensures the application of fundamental ethical principles and legislation to all phases of the I-CHANGE scientific research, with special focus on the life of the data within the technical tools used by the I-CHANGE Living Labs (LLs) and the respective digital platforms. It complements the overall project view in terms of ethical principles, in particular: D1.7 Ethical Guide dealing with the ethical and privacy aspects when scientists approach people, for the participation activities envisaged by the different Living Labs, and D7.3 Data Management Plan dealing with full compliance with the main driving regulatory documents on data protection, privacy, and security.
To summarise, the report contains the presentation of the I-CHANGE ethics view, the description of the key sensors used in the project, and their respective ethical issues.
Data Management Plan (Deliverable 7.3)
Published: November 2023
This deliverable is the first version of the I-CHANGE Data Management Plan (DMP), that will be updated as the project progresses to more mature phases.
This version of the DMP is trying to emphasise the importance of the FAIR data principles and how to implement them, by considering the key role of international standards.Indeed, it provides theoretical background to make clear what types of data and international standards shall be followed in the I-CHANGE project to increase the FAIRness of the data and gives an initial classification of the data that should be collected and managed. In addition to the data which will be produced within the project, I-CHANGE will make use of existing sources of data and observations to fulfil the project goals.
The data is classified according to several criteria, such as spatial and non-spatial data, by methods of collection and generation,or by acquisition regime. This classification will be used for the organisation of the data and metadata where users can find data in an easier manner and might be revised according to the project needs. It is important to note that as the I-CHANGE project will manage a broad range of data, different security and ethical aspects will be considered.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101037193.