What is the Scent Toolbox?
The Scent Toolbox is a set of smart technologies designed to engage citizens in environmental monitoring.
Why use the Scent Toolbox?
With the Scent Toolbox, you can use citizen science to collect up-to-date information about changes in the environmental, such as changes in land-cover/land-use, river parameters and soil conditions. All of this information is analysed by the Toolbox and used to help scientists and policymakers to create more accurate flood maps for the prevention of floods and other natural disasters.
Who is it for?
Anybody can use the Scent Toolbox. Public authorities can use the Toolbox to crowdsource information to make more informed policy-decisions concerning flood management and prevention. Communities and environmental groups can use the Toolbox to monitor changes in their local environment. Individuals can use the Scent Toolbox apps to have fun while also helping to protect the environment.
How does it work?
Scent Toolbox – Applications
Explore your surroundings with Scent Explore!
Scent Explore is an augmented reality game developed for the Scent project by XTeam Software Solutions.Learn more
Scent Explore invites you to discover your environment in an exciting way. Little Scent Explore characters are hiding in interesting places around you, and you collect points when you find them! Your smartphone or tablet will give an audio alert when you are approaching a character. To earn points, just tap on the screen to capture a character when you see it. Your camera will take a photo of the location and upload it to Scent. Compete with your friends and family and see who wins!
By playing Scent Explore, you make a valuable contribution to citizen science. You help researchers understand changes in the environment because all the locations in which you catch Scent characters contain interesting information that researchers will use to analyse and map the environment.
Join the Scent movement and become a citizen scientist today!
Scent Collaborate
Scent Collaborate is a browsing-based crowdsourcing platform developed by XTeam for the Scent project.Learn more
Scent Collaborate allows users to train and improve the Scent automated tools simply by browsing existing images and labelling them. Teaching the tools to identify pastures, forests, river banks, buildings, paved areas etc. will allow for more accurate mapping of the environment, which in turn will help predict and prevent flooding and other natural disasters.
You can access Scent Collaborate here:
https://scent-project.eu/scent-collaborate
The validation of the labels is supported by the Scent Captcha plugin that is embedded in the Scent Collaborate application. Scent Captcha plugin is distributed as an open source component, and can be embedded in third-party websites. The source code is available here
Scent Measure
Scent Measure is an innovative application developed by ICCS for the Scent project to measure changes in soil conditions. Learn more
Scent Measure is easy to use – simply insert the portable sensor into the soil, select whether to measure temperature or moisture, and receive the measures directly to your screen.
Scent Measure is triggered from Scent Explore app. When playing Scent Explore, you will be prompted to take a measurement at an important point of interest for scientists and researchers, and thereby contribute to monitoring and analysing your environment.
SCENT Measure application is released under an open source license and is available here
Scent Campaign Manager
The Scent Campaign Manager is a web-based application developed by ICCS for the Scent project, which allows public administrators, policy makers and other interested users to create and manage citizen science campaigns for monitoring and streamlining the collection of environmental information.Learn more
The Scent Campaign Manager allows users to select a specific area of interest to set up a Scent campaign. Citizens can then join the campaign by using the ‘Scent Explore’ and ‘Scent Measure’ apps to take photos of Land-Cover and Land-Use and gather important environmental information about the campaign area.
If you are interested in registering as a user and set up a Scent campaign in your city, town or urban area, please contact ICCS via email at: ScentCampaignManager@lists.scent-project.eu.
Scent Crowdsourcing Platform
The crowdsourcing platform is a key digital infrastructure of the Scent Toolbox, connecting all applications and services and orchestrating their functionality in a purposeful manner.Learn more
It acts as a central data broker that links the Scent frontend applications used by citizens to provide images, annotations, sensory data, event reports and videos, to all the other toolbox components.
The crowdsourcing platform allows local authorities to configure and manage crowdsourcing campaigns, define points of interest where pictures and measurements are needed, and monitor in real-time the pictures collected by citizens and the issues reported.
It also manages the complete lifecycle of citizen-generated images. Once a citizen takes a relevant picture using the Scent Explore app, the picture is sent to the crowdsourcing platform. It stores a copy of the image on the cloud and makes it available to the Scent artificial intelligence ‘heart’, also known as the Scent Intelligence Engine (SIE), which uses advanced machine learning techniques to automatically understand what is in the image. The annotations are fed back to the crowdsourcing platform, which is in charge of deciding whether the quality of the annotations is sufficient. If not, the image is made available for being further annotated, this time by people, through the CAPTCHA plugin or the Scent Collaborate app.
SCENT Measure application is released under an open source license and is available here.
Scent Harmonisation Platform
Considering the constantly increasing volume of citizen-generated data, it is of high importance to ensure that data of different origin are comparable and compatible, whilst facilitating their integration into models and the development of new applications.Learn more
To this end, data collected from citizens should be easily discoverable, accessible, re-usable and available for future use.
Scent meets these aspects of data interoperability through the development of a Harmonisation platform that enables the management, storage and provision of all citizen-generated data and added-value information produced by the various Scent tools (i.e. improved Land Cover / Land Use maps, flood risk maps) and translates them to standardised resources following the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards.
The Harmonisation platform implements also a Data Quality Control system aiming to cope with the following main challenges: correctness/accuracy of the user measurements, user reliability and protection of the system from malicious contributions. Finally, to achieve a maximum impact on scientific research and public policy, these resources will be also offered to the GEOSS portal and other relevant national repositories through a standardized way.
Scent Flood Models
The Scent Toolbox includes hydrodynamic and hydrological models that have been set up for the two pilot areas of Scent; the Danube Delta and the Kifisos catchment. Learn more
The models are computational representations of water dynamics in the pilot areas, and they are initially built using existing ground observations and remote sensing data.
After the Scent field campaigns, the models will be enhanced with crowdsourced data. The value of citizens’ contributions and their role in generating improved flood risk maps and spatiotemporal flooding patterns will be assessed.
The different characteristics of the two areas require different modelling approaches. 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 the Kifisos catchment, the pilot area is the upstream region of Athens city, where many hydrological components of the water cycle are more influent. A combination of models was therefore set up: a hydrological model connected to a hydrodynamic model at the end of the basin.
These models form a key component of the Toolbox as they serve as a basis for determining how they can be enriched through crowd-sourced data.
Scent Water Tools
Scent enables the collection of river measurements in a uniform way, which is useful to the development of flood models and invariant of the experience of the volunteers to collect the scientific data. Learn more
In order to properly collect river measurements, scientists use a variety of methods that require extended training and can be very time-consuming. To avoid that, the Scent volunteers are simply asked to take a picture of a water level indicator or a video of the predefined floating object and upload it through the gaming applications. The crowdsourced data is then forwarded to two tools that have been specifically designed to automatically extract the water level and the water velocity in a consistent and accurate way.
The water measurement tool uses state of the art image recognition techniques in order to extract the water level from images containing a water level indicator that is half-submerged into water. The goal of the tools is to ‘read’ the indicator and extract the number that is closer to the water level.
The water velocity calculation tool uses innovative video processing algorithms in order to extract the water surface velocity from a video containing a pre-defined floating object moving on the surface of a water body.
the water velocity calculation tool is available here and the water level measurement tool is available here.
Scent Map Segmentation Tool
Scent introduces novel machine learning approaches that automatically detect and annotate segments on satellite and aerial imagery, with land cover / land use (LC/LU) elements that affect flood risk and flood pattern determination (i.e. river banks, forests, buildings, etc). Learn more
Citizen-generated data are utilized for the training of the map segmentation tool, that aims to produce LC/LU maps of improved accuracy which are essential for the construction of hydrodynamic and hydrological models. These models are used to produce flood risk and pattern maps for urban and rural flood cases.
Last but not least, there is a prominent need to include automatic assessment and monitoring of land cover and state of soil in rural and urban areas as well as to detect seasonal changes, natural disasters, and human-related area development. Thus, the map segmentation tool aims to extend current repositories (i.e. GEOSS) by allowing for more frequent updates of local monitoring of land cover/use changes and with higher spatial resolution, using inexpensive crowd-sourcing tools.
Scent Intelligence Engine and Image Analysis Tool
SCENT studies the content of each image, uploaded by the citizens, looking for the information relevant to hydrodynamic modelling of the area. The type of ground cover or riverbank, presence and condition of water drains, and so on, can tell the experts much about the water behaviour in this area in the times of flooding. Learn more
SCENT platform is developed to gather thousands of images, sampling large of urban and nature areas, from the engaged citizens. Once the image comes in, we know where and when it was taken, and there is a piece of partial information on what’s in it, tagged by the author. However, the work only begins here. The Image Analysis Tool, powered by the cutting edge Computer Vision technology and brain-mimicking Deep Neural Networks, carefully analyzes the image, extracting semantic information. What kind of land cover is this – concrete, dirt road, or pasture? Is there buildings and cars or trees and riverbanks? And if there is a storm drain found, is it clean on clogged? All these findings provide important clues on how the water will behave in this area, enabling the hydrologists to make reliable predictions and to prevent casualties and damage.
How can I organise a Scent Campaign?
To organise a Scent citizen science campaign in your area email getinvolved@scent-project.eu. You can also check out the results of our pilot campaigns in Attica, Greece and the Danube Delta, Romania, here. We have also put together a training programme to help you use the Scent Toolbox to collect valuable environmental data.
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SOCIAL STREAMS
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Welcome Session
The Showcase was opened on 20 June by Eleni Velgaki, Director within the Region of Attica; Angelos Amditis, Scent Project Coordinator; and Izabela Freytag, EASME Project Advisor at the European Commission, who commended the project for making science and data accessible for all and for harnessing citizen science to make a positive different for the future.
Smart Technologies for Citizen-Driven Flood Monitoring and Management
“The data collected by citizens must be easy to find and accessible to support its future use”, said Valantis Tsiaskos, Scent Project Manager. The panel, also including Stefano Tamascelli, XTeam Solutions; Joseph Shtok, IBM Research; Ioana Popescu, IHE-Delft; and Valantis Tsiakos, ICCS, discussed how the Scent Toolbox technologies engage citizens in collecting information about the environment, and use machine-learning to transform this data into flood models and standardised resources.
Interactive Demonstration: The Scent Toolbox
Daniele Miorandi, U-Hopper, shared how the Scent Toolbox helps to gather citizen-generated data and translates it into resources to help policymakers make better decisions. Throughout the Interactive Demonstration, people could test out tools such as Scent Measure. Citizens use portable sensors together with Scent Measure to record and measure changes in soil conditions. Other Scent Toolbox components on display included Scent Campaign Manager, Scent Map Segmentation and Delineation, and Learn with Scent.
Roundtable: Challenges and Enables of Citizen Science in Flood Monitoring and Management 
Panellists discussed challenges and enablers of citizen science in flood monitoring and management. THe panel included researchers and policymakers from Greece and Romania, each bringing a new perspective to why people engage in citizen science and how to sustain that engagement. They were all in agreement that people need to see they are having an impact and can help by contributing to something greater. Izabel Freytag, from the European Commission, affirmed “There are many solutions and good examples. We can learn from other citizen science initiatives and educate people, starting with existing communities.”
Citizen Science Success Stories and Lessons Learned from Upscaling Such Initiatives
This discussion led into a session focused on success stories and lessons learned from other citizen science initiatives. Partners from LandSense, WeObserve Ecosystem, GROW Observatory, SMURBS, and HRTA from Scent each shared about how their projects have engaged citizens to become citizen scientists. Panelists were clear that data sharing is key to future developments in the field.
Field Trip to the Kifisos River Basin
On 21 June, participants were brought on a field trip to the Kifisos river basin, where participants were able to test the new Scent apps in a live Scent citizen science campaign. Participants were guided along the river bank where they used Scent Explore to gather data, such as land-use/land-cover images, water velocity measurements and river parameter measurements. Using the Scent Measure app and a portable sensor, the participants took measurements of soil moisture and air temperature at points of environmental interest. The information they gathered helps to create flood models for the river basin.
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Presentations
Technical Posters
How to Participate
To enter, send a short description of your idea (1000 words plus any pictures, graphs etc) and a short biography (200 words) to appathon@scent-project.eu by 29 March 2019. If you are applying as a team, a representative should apply on behalf of your team, and include the names of all team members.
All entrants will receive feedback on the relevance of their submissions by 11 April 2019.
Selected participants will then enter the ‘rapid development’ phase where they will develop their proposed app in a one-month period. The deadline for submitting the final developed app is by 17 May 2019 at 00:00 CET. The apps should be submitted to https://isense-cloud.iccs.gr/s/Scent_Appathon.
The winner of the Appathon will be announced on 24 May 2019.
Participation in the Scent Appathon is subject to the attached terms and conditions.
The Prize
The winner of the Scent Appathon will be awarded the following prizes:
– The app will be included and promoted as part of the Scent Toolbox, making it available to an estimated 1500 currently registered users;
– The exhibition of the app at the Scent Showcase, 20 June 2019 in Athens, Greece (travel and participation costs will be covered by the Scent project);
– The demonstration and testing of the app in the final pilot campaign of the Scent project, 21 June in Athens, Greece;
– The usage of the app during the remaining Scent pilot campaigns to be organised in Athens, Greece, and the Danube Delta, Romania;
– Promotion of the app through the project website, social media and other communication activities, including a live broadcast of the app during the Scent Showcase and the featuring of the app on the WeObserve Website.
Instructions
Developers are asked to create a mobile application that can train users to improve their technique in capturing videos using the Scent Explore app. The new app should provide a test suite where users can practice their video technique and check if they are following the guidelines provided to them for using Scent Explore. The app should correct them when they are not following the guidelines, and provide feedback and tips on how to improve their technique.
The training material in the app can be based on augmented reality and graphics, or else use videos collected by volunteers using the Scent Explore app in previous Scent campaigns.
The guidelines that should be evaluated by the app are:
– Videos should not be taken from up-close, the floating object should be a small percentage of the total frame;
– The camera frame should include some stationary features located at the riverbank;
– The camera should be steady;
– The camera should be perpendicular to the riverbank;
– The device should not be titled – phones should be held perpendicular to the ground and not angled backward or forward;
– The user should keep the camera stable, fixed in position and not follow the floating object;
– The video may include frames without the floating object, by only at the beginning and end.
You can download the full instructions given to Scent Explore users here. Some example of videos (successful and unsuccessful) are located here.
Criteria
The apps will be evaluated and scored according to the following criteria:
1. The app should be compliant with the video capture guidelines, available here. Each of the seven guidelines will be tested, following the instructions inside the app. Each guideline will be evaluated as either succeeded (Score 1) or failed (Score 0). The sum of these seven scores will be input into the following formula (4*score_sum)/7.
-Score 0-4: Computed based on the formula, according to the identified invalid user actions
2. The messages should be informative and support the user to provide high quality data:
– Score 0 (failed): No messages provided
– Score 1 (good): Messages describing only the user invalid actions
– Score 2 (excellent): Messages describing the user invalid actions and suggestions for improvement
3. The app should include graphic-design and augmented reality elements:
– Score O (failed): No or limited graphic elements
– Score 1 (good): Detailed graphic elements
– Score 2 (excellent): Detailed graphic elements enriched with augmented reality elements
4. The app should be available for at least Android 6. IOS compatibility and will be considered an asset:
– Score O (failed): Compatible only with Android version 6
– Score 1 (good): Compatible with Android version 7+
– Score 2 (excellent): Compatible with both Android version 7+ and IOS
5. The app should provide a way for Scent Toolbox users to collect data (user experience):
– Score 0 (failed): The app shows significant bugs which do not allow normal use
– Score 1 (good): The app provides sufficient interfaces to guide the user towards appropriate data collection
– Score 2 (excellent): The app supports the user based on his level/needs and provides additional tips and helpful information
Downloads
Scent Downloads
including Fact Sheet, Logo files, wallpaper, poster and graphics.
Scent logo pack
| Title: | scent_logo_pack.zip |
| INCLUDES: | All standard formats for screen and print use including EPS, PNG, JPEG |
| FILE SIZE: | 4.1Mb |
| DOWNLOAD: | Click here to download |
Scent brand guidelines
Scent wallpaper
| Title: | scent_wallpaper.jpg |
| RESOLUTION: | 1920px x 1080px |
| FILE SIZE: | 1.5Mb |
| DOWNLOAD: | Click here to download |
Scent Fact Sheet
Scent partner map
| Title: | scent_partner_map.png |
| DIMENSIONS: | 1312px × 568px |
| FILE SIZE: | 250Kb |
| DOWNLOAD: | Click here to download |
Scent project poster
| Title: | scent_poster_18-01.pdf |
| DIMENSIONS: | 1189mm × 841mm |
| FILE SIZE: | 174.3Mb |
| DOWNLOAD: | Click here to download |
Scent architecture diagram
| Title: | scent_architeture_diagram_v1.2.png |
| DIMENSIONS: | 3472px × 2230px |
| FILE SIZE: | 421Kb |
| DOWNLOAD: | Click here to download |
Scent overview diagram
| Title: | scent_overview_diagram.png |
| DIMENSIONS: | 2694px × 2073px |
| FILE SIZE: | 2Mb |
| DOWNLOAD: | Click here to download |
Project Deliverables
Scent Project Deliverables
Download links to project deliverable summaries and full PDF deliverables.
| D1.1 | Scent Stakeholder Analysis and End User Needs and Requirements | Download » |
| D1.2 | Benchmarking of available in-situ infrastructure | Download » |
| D1.3 | Scent toolbox system requirements | Download summary » |
| D1.4 | Scent toolbox system architecture definition | Download summary » |
| D2.1 | Scent Brand strategy | Download » |
| D2.3 | Best Practices in Serious Games | Download » |
| D2.4 | Game design document and engagement strategy | Download summary » |
| D4.1 | Scent Crowd-sourcing Platform Design | Download summary » |
| D5.1 | SIE service internal requirements, analysis and architectural design | Download summary » |
| D6.1 | Report on the developed models for the two pilots using existing data (hydrodynamic model for Danube Delta and hydrological model for Kifisos) | Download summary » |
| D8.1 | Project website | Download » |
| D8.2 | Communication strategy and plan | Download » |
| D8.3 | Data Management Plan and POPD Requirements | Download summary » |
| D8.4 | Plan for the Dissemination and Commercial Exploitation of the Project’s Results (Intermediate Report) | Download summary » |
| D8.5 | Information Packs for Citizen led communities, networks and associations | Download » |
| D9.1 | Internal website and collaborative tool | Download summary » |
| D9.2 | Risk and quality procedures manual | Download summary » |
| D9.3 | Ethical issues clearance plan | Download summary » |
Horizon 2020
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 688930.