Have you seen the new communications resources on our website?

A range of dissemination material has been added to our site as an Information pack available for you to download and use across your own dissemination activities and channels. The elements included in the pack form a cohesive entity of resources developed to help partners and other stakeholders raise awareness about and interest in the project. They facilitate systematic and effective on-brand communication by stakeholders including citizen led communities, networks and associations.

You can browse through the selection of Scent logo variations, graphics, design material and brand guidelines in the Downloads section.

You may also be interested in the Scent journal articles, conference abstracts and conference posters published so far. You will find them in the Publications section.

Rising trends in Citizen Science have led to the development of Citizen Observatories (COs) for environmental monitoring, an initiative widely supported by the European Commission under FP7 and H2020.

WeObserve is a new H2020 EC-funded project launched on 1st December 2017. The project aims to improve coordination between the currently existing COs as well as to promote related activities at regional, European and international level. WeObserve is a Coordination and Support Action which tackles three key challenges that COs and community-based environmental initiatives are facing: awareness, acceptability and sustainability.

To achieve these objectives, the WeObserve project brings together a strong consortium of 7 partners, built upon the four H2020 CO projects, namely Ground Truth 2.0, GROW, LandSense and Scent, with strong ties to a wide range of networks (ECSA), users and stakeholders, such as GEO and Copernicus and CREAF, which have active roles within the project.

The Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS) of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and I-Sense group, takes part in the WeObserve consortium and is responsible for all the dissemination, communication and outreach activities of the project. More specifically, ICCS aims to:

• Define the dissemination, exploitation and communication strategy (DEC) & update the DEC plan as the project progresses,
• Foster dialogue with defined stakeholder groups and promote the WeObserve project within Europe and beyond,
• Develop an interactive knowledge platform to include the Citizen Observatories’ knowledge base, marketplace and relevant communication channels, linking this to the current Citizen Observatory website operated by ICCS,
• Coordinate a series of events to foster networking, data and knowledge exchange, the diffusion of basic findings, technologies and ongoing research in the field,
• Track and monitor the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with regards to the Dissemination, Exploitation and Communication plan to maximise the project’s impact, adapting the plan accordingly to respond to KPI progress.

On December 12th – 13th 2017, the project coordinator IIASA hosted the project kickoff meeting with EC presence in Luxemburg, Austria. The key objectives of the meeting included securing partner consensus on the vision, mission and operational plan for WeObserve, as well as defining roles, expectations and the project timeline.

Join WeObserve on social media and discover more!

The hydrodynamic and hydrological models of Scent are ready.

The models are built with available data and without citizen observatories contributions. The models are computational representations of water dynamics in the project’s case studies: the Danube Delta and the Kifisos catchment. The models will be enhanced with crowdsourced data after the Scent field campaigns and the value of citizen contributions will be assessed for the case of floods. In the Danube Delta, specifically in the Sontea-Fortuna pilot area, two hydrodynamic models were set up in order to simulate the complex network of channels and lakes in the area: one 1D model and one 1D/2D model.

In addition to cross-sectional data in the canals, lake bathymetry and the topography of the 2D areas, it was necessary to define the amount and variation in time of the flow entering and leaving the Danube Delta, as well the roughness of the terrain. The conceptual representations of the models are given in the following figures.

Conceptual representation of a HEC-RAS model

Conceptual representation of a HEC-HMS model

In the Kifisos catchment, the pilot area is the upstream region of Athens city, where many hydrological components of the water cycle are more influent. Therefore, a combination of models was set up: a hydrological model connected to a hydrodynamic model at the end of the basin. The first model represents the rainfall-runoff process of extreme rainfall events:

• What happens to precipitation once it falls?
• Does it overland terrain impermeability (city-like regions)?
• Does the groundwater to the discharge? And how long does it take for the water to flow downstream?

The area was sub-divided into 21 sub-basins to describe its spatial variability. Elements such as land cover, soil texture and rivers’ length were used in the model. For the hydrodynamic model, a fully 2D model was developed.

The models were developed using the USACE HEC-RAS (hydrodynamic) and HEC-HMS (hydrological) software. Several representations of these main models were developed to test different aspects of the case studies and for calibration and validation.

Initial work has also been done to define the best pathways for collecting data with citizens during the campaigns, such that collected data is potentially useful to the modelling effort. Next, the work on hydrodynamic and hydrological models will focus on researching techniques to integrate crowdsourced data into flood models and, further on, by doing this integration – hopefully achieving enhanced models.

Find us on YouTube! In our latest video, Scent partner Ioana Popescu, Associate Professor of Hydroinformatics at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education describes the institute, the Scent project and the role of the institute in the project.

Check out this and our other videos and subscribe to our channel here.

Scent plenary meeting
The 5th Scent consortium meeting
20-22 March 2018
Trento, Italy

RSCy2018
Sixth International Conference on Remote Sensing and Geo-Information of the Environment
26-29 March 2018
Paphos, Cyprus

EGU General Assembly 2018
European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2018
8-13 April 2018
Vienna, Austria

Deltas and Wetlands
The 26th Scientific Symposium Deltas and Wetlands 2018
16-20 May 2018
Tulcea, Romania

EUSEA Annual Conference 2018
Annual Conference organised by the European Science Engagement Association
17-18 May 2018
Madrid, Spain

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 688930.