ELISE

The air we breathe, the water we drink and the soil that grows our food are part of a delicate global ecosystem that is increasingly under pressure from human activities. … As our population grows we have to recognize that our consumption of the planet’s resources is unsustainable. We need a global transformation of attitude and practice. (april 22, 2014, International Mother Earth Day, Ban Ki-moon)

In this context, ELISE wants to activate an ecosystem where environmental information are collected, elaborated and shared in order to produce new knowledge and services that can improve well-being and development of urban areas. ELISE is a cutting-edge scientific experiment in the field of Internet of Things and in the management of open and big data. Moreover it would be a crowdsourcing experience, it will activate the citizen collaboration on environmental issues. The platform will include both mobile and fix air pollution monitoring using low cost sensing devices, coupled with theoretical models of air diffusion. Moreover it will include apps and web games that may encourage citizen participations and will collect personal perceptions.

Citizen, private and public companies and institutions will be the active stakeholder in the creation of services and will be also the final users. The main idea of the project is that the most effective way of producing a “transformation of attitude and practice” is by involving the citizens themselves in monitoring campaigns (a citizen science bottom-up approach). The bottom-up approach is common to the Living Lab research concept, where the stakeholder (citizen, companies, institutions) will participate in co-creation, exploration, experimentation and evaluation of innovative ideas, and ELISE will perform the task involving also students of several high schools in Turin area.

Participatory sensing, involving citizens in environmental monitoring, can have multiple potential benefits. Firstly, it can increase coverage of monitored areas, both in time and space, due to the ability to distribute the monitoring activities to multiple individuals. Secondly, the act of monitoring air quality and more in general life quality by citizens could facilitate learning and increase their awareness of environmental issues. The ISI experience maturated in the EveryAware project is crucial in order to develop viral games and apps to enhance citizen active participation. Furthermore models and concepts borrowed from statistical physics of complex systems will be used to analyze and uncover signatures of citizen awareness enhancement and behavioural changes.