Precipitation data collected from the citizen science activities of the I-CHANGE project were used for a comparison with those from the official network during the disastrous events of these days, showing their reliability for monitoring. Then, these data were also used for a prediction experiment, showing that they allow results in line with those obtained by taking the official data. A testament to the contribution that citizen science can make to the scientific process
The damage toll, which unfortunately includes loss of life as well as loss of property and productive activities that are still being estimated, of the floods in Emilia-Romagna Region continues in these days. There is a growing need to learn how to deal with these events, in emergency management as well as in risk prevention. Underlying this ability is, as always, the technical and scientific knowledge that allows us to understand weather-climate dynamics: knowledge to which everyone can contribute.
In fact, the importance of the participation not only of the entire scientific and political community but also of the citizenry when it comes to dealing with natural events is emphasized by many European initiatives, with the ultimate aim of achieving sustainable development marked also by climate change mitigation and adaptation. It is in this perspective that the European project I-CHANGE, coordinated by CIMA Research Foundation, is set, and it is in the context of this project that our program director Antonio Parodi has, in these days, shown with a simple experiment the value of citizenship’s contribution also in monitoring and forecasting weather events.
A few words about I-CHANGE
Started in November 2021and funded under the European H2020 program, I-CHANGE has a goal that could be summed up in a single sentence, “engaging citizenship to raise awareness.” A sentence, however, that is realized in a multiplicity of actions carried out by the 14 project partners in various parts of the European Union (and beyond): data collection through citizen science activities, educational and information pathways to understand the impact of daily behaviors on the environment, living labs, creation of customized information systems and web portals.
“CIMA Research Foundation, in addition to coordinating the project in its entirety, is responsible for the citizen science initiatives that are and will be carried out in Genoa, in collaboration with ARPAL, the Region of Liguria and the Metropolitan City of Genoa,” Dr Parodi says. “The concept of citizen science has a rather long history by now, but the two declinations are really varied; in general, it involves involving citizens in the collection and analysis of data, or of their verification, by placing them side by side with researchers and researchers and, at the same time, making them part of the scientific process.”
Hence, the citizen science activities carried out by I-CHANGE, which involve the collection of different types of environmental data and also involve, for the purpose, the creation of specific apps. But how can this data then be used?
Monitoring weather events…
A nice example of an answer to this question comes from the “little experiment” carried out by Dr Parodi just during these days of heavy rains over part of Italian peninsula. For some years now, CIMA Research Foundation has been participating in the collection of data regarding rainfall from private citizens, who have equipped themselves with rain gauge stations: there are more than 30,000 stations throughout the European Union, including about 3,000 in Italy. In short, a potentially important source of additional information to the data routinely collected by official networks.
“On Monday, May 16, as part of I-CHANGE, we experimentally tried to use this information to monitor the current bad weather,” Dr Parodi says. “The data from the different stations are in fact published on the open version of the myDEWETRA platform, a tool developed by CIMA Research Foundation and owned by the Italian Department of Civil Protection, that allows the monitoring, forecasting and prevention of various natural hazards. In this way, we were able to compare the data from this citizen science activity with those of the official network: the agreement between the two was definitely good. In short, the citizen science network can also be said to be reliable of monitoring these events. The evaluation over the 48-hour period (between May 16 and 18) is also good, and it showed the excess of precipitation compared to the average for the period. If we take Forli, for example, citizen science records show that values of 160 mm were reached in 48 hours, while Copernicus data show that the average for May is about 30 mm.”
… and forecast
Dr Parodi then tried to understand whether, in addition to monitoring, the data collected through citizen science activities could also be employed in other fields. Specifically, he tried to employ them in a methodology called “data assimilation,” which, very briefly, involves making the forecast model “digest” additional (and more up-to-date) data than it is given when it begins processing. This system, which makes it possible to reduce the uncertainty of the result, was employed on the weather model used by CIMA Research Foundation, WRF (we recently discussed it here).
“More in detail, we used the data collected by the I-CHANGE citizen science network as input to a version of WRF that we employ in another European project, EVEREST.This project is also funded under Horizon 2020 but is more “technical,” because it aims to increase computational efficiency for analyzing massive amounts of data,” Dr Parodi says. “This step allowed us to evaluate, in qualitative terms, the results of the forecast scenarios that are obtained with the data collected from citizens.”
Again, the result of the modeling run, which provided 24-hour forecasts, was in line with what is obtained with data from the official network. Proof that citizen science data are valuable, both in monitoring and atmospheric modeling.
“These operations were really just a small experiment, but it’s really interesting to see how good data a citizen, if he or she wants, can collect-and not only in the meteorological field, of course,” Dr Parodi concludes. “If we think that, in addition to helping scientific work, these activities help to make people really participate in our work, to know more and more about its tools and purposes, it becomes really evident how much this form of participatory science, which involves even those who do not have a scientific background or work in the field, can help us face today’s challenges – including those concerning natural hazards and the influence of the climate crisis. Moreover, it responds to a very specific need, because citizens are now called upon to make decisions on many scientific issues and, as a result, the world of research needs to be able to engage with them as well and not just other experts.”