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Scent Scientists Develop a New Game to Enable Citizens Monitor the Environment

Scientists across Europe have developed a new augmented reality game called ‘Scent Explore’ to enable and encourage citizens to monitor their local environments
It’s one of four new Apps developed by the Scent Project to improve the accuracy of existing flood risk maps by more than 15%
Scent is a European Union research project funded under the Horizon 2020 programme

Scientists across Europe have developed a new augmented reality game to enable and encourage citizens to monitor their local environments. Read more →

Scent Spotlight series – Marian Mierla, Danube Delta National Institute

We recently spoke to Marian Mierla, Scientific Researcher at Danube Delta National Institute (DDNI).

DDNI is the National Institute for Research and Development in the Danube Delta region. Its research and development work also covers the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve, which includes the neighbouring areas as well. The researchers at DDNI, based in Tulcea, Romania, specialise in different aspects of geography and biology, some study water quality, others living species etc. The institute also has an informational system and geomatics department, and parts of the institute’s development activities focus on the planning of dredging processes. Read more →

Scent Newsletter #1 | The technologies behind Scent

August 23, 2017/0 Comments/in News, Project News /by Linda Henriksson

This article originally appeared in the first Scent Newsletter (July 2017). To receive all of the articles and features in one place, make sure to subscribe to the Scent newsletter here.

Scent System Architecture
The Scent project will enable citizens to become the ‘eyes’ of policy makers by monitoring land-cover/use changes in their everyday activities. This is achieved through the following integrated set of smart collaborative technologies:

• Low-cost / portable data collection tools

• An innovative crowd-sourcing platform

• Serious gaming applications for a large-scale image collection and semantic annotation

The Scent Newsletter makes its Summer debut

August 21, 2017/0 Comments/in News, Project News /by Linda Henriksson

In July, our new Scent Newsletter officially launched, with issue #1 providing an in-depth overview of the science behind the Scent project, a summary of the second Scent plenary meeting in Rome, and more.

Scent Spotlight series – Ioana Popescu, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education

July 27, 2017/0 Comments/in News, Project News /by Linda Henriksson

We recently spoke to Ioana Popescu, Associate Professor of Hydroinformatics at IHE Delft.

IHE Delft is an education and research institute based in the Netherlands. The students at IHE Delft come from various countries around the world, and the institute sees the potential benefits of the new Scent technology for these students, some of whom come from regions exposed to floods. Ioana explains that IHE Delft decided to get involved in the project partly because of their research interest and partly because of their students, who ultimately will be the beneficiaries of the systems being developed. Read more →

Scent ‘Spotlight’ Series – Daniele Miorandi, U-Hopper

June 13, 2017/0 Comments/in News, Project News /by Linda Henriksson

U-Hopper – an intro from Daniele Miorandi
Daniele Miorandi is executive VP for research and development at U-Hopper, a research-intensive technology-driven company. U-Hopper builds solutions for other companies through data analytics tools.

Daniele focused on U-Hopper’s earlier engagement with environmental projects before Scent, how smaller communities can benefit from Scent and how Scent can become a ‘lighthouse project’.

Scent ‘Spotlight’ Series – Athanasia Tsertou, ICCS

May 30, 2017/0 Comments/in News, Project News /by Linda Henriksson

Our Second ‘Spotlight’ entry focuses on the work of ICCS, the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, a research institute based in Athens. ICCS conducts research across several application areas, including security, transport, logistics and the environment. For the latter, ICCS interests include information and communication technologies for environmental applications, including sensors, sensor networks and embedded devices.

Scent project web site launched

November 30, 2016/0 Comments/in News, Project News /by webmaster

The Scent project is pleased to announce the launch of its web site today. The web site will be a core communication channel for all stakeholders involved, including the general public. Read more →

Scent Toolbox

September 24, 2019/by Linda Henriksson

Scent Toolbox

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

The app uses portable sensors to measure and report the soil moisture and air temperature to your smartphone or tablet.

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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The Danube Delta, Romania

September 24, 2019/by Linda Henriksson

The Danube Delta, Romania

A SCENT Pilot Area

The Danube Delta is the largest natural wetland in Europe and is protected under UNESCO as a unique biosphere reserve. With the third largest biodiversity in the world, the reserve has more than 5,500 specifies of flora and fauna, as well as the highest concentration of bird colonies in Europe.

More than 10,000 people call the reserve home and rely on its natural resources for their livelihoods. However, the delta has suffered dramatic changes due to human intervention such as damming, fishing and forestry, disturbing the ecological balance of the wetlands. Monitoring the changing landscape s the first step in protecting the environment and communities.

Five Scent citizen science campaigns were organised in the Danube Delta area between 2018 and 2019. 193 volunteers from businesses, schools, universities and citizen groups in the local community were brought on field trips in small boats to explore the delta and test the new Scent Toolbox. Playing Scent Explore and Scent Measure, the volunteers competed with each other to catch Scent creatures hiding along the river in augmented reality. Simply by taking a photo or video of the creatures with the app, the volunteers were able to earn points while also collecting valuable environmental information about land-use/land cover, river parameters such as water velocity and depth, and soil moisture.

The information gathered by the volunteers using the apps is uploaded to the Scent Toolbox, where scientists and researchers can create flood maps for the management of flooding, and the protection of the Danube Delta’s environment and inhabitants.

Access the citizen-science data and products generated through the Scent Harmonisation platform here, and inspect them through interactive visualisations and dashboards here.

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SOCIAL STREAMS

Scent Training Resources

September 24, 2019/by Linda Henriksson

Scent Training

Scent has developed a programme of resources to train different groups in using the Scent Toolbox and organising data collection campaigns in their area. The materials have been created with the needs of different users in mind, such as citizens, environmental organisations scientists and researchers, policymakers and local authorities. The programmes were piloted with citizens and authorities during field campaigns in the Danube Delta and the Attica region of Greece. Read the descriptions and access the materials below.

Scent Authority Training

Scent has developed training presentations for local authorities explaining how to use Scent Campaign Manager to organise a Scent campaign and the Scent Toolbox apps to collect and manage important environmental data. The presentations were tested with agencies responsible for the environment, water management and civil protection, including the Environmental Agency of Tulcea and Flood Defence Emergy Office in Romania, and the Minitry of the Environment and directorate responsible for civil protection and development planning in the Region of Attica, Greece.

Download the presentations here including:

General presentation of the Scent project
Modelling in the case study area
Campaigns of data collection
Scent Campaign Manager
Scent Explore

Scent Citizens Training

Download the presentations here including:

General presentation of the Scent project
Modelling in the case study area
Campaigns of data collection
Scent Campaign Manager
Scent Explore

Scent Cookbook

The Scent Cookbook was developed as a guide for organising your own Scent citizen science campaign. Based on the findings and experience from the Scent pilot campaigns organised in Romania and Greece, the Cookbook provides guidance on issues covering recruiting volunteers, planning logistics, setting up the Scent Toolbox and utilising the data. The Cookbook will be made available soon.

ScentVR

ScentVR (Scent VR Training) is the winning app developed by Riccardo Bandera of Curtel Games during the SCENT Appathon to help citizens and environmental users to master their technique of capturing data using Scent Explore. ScentVR is a virtual reality mobile app providing a test suite consisting of three scenarios, through which a user can practice their technique in capturing videos. The application checks if the user is following all the data collection guidelines, corrects them when they are not, and provides them with informative messages to improve technique.

Download ScentVR for android here.

Additional Resources

The resources above have been especially developed to help all types of users organise a campaign and collect crowdsourced data. Scent has also produced a number of other resources which support the Scent Training Programme, and are also valuable resources for people interested in organising their own citizen science initiative.

Scent has published scientific publications in academic journals reporting the technical breakthroughs and results of the Scent project. Read the publications here.
In cooperation with its sister projects LandSense, GroundTruth 2.0, GROW Observatory and WeObserve, Scent has produced a policy brief entitled ‘Citizen Observatories: A voice for citizens in environmental monitoring’ providing recommendations for policymakers for supporting citizen science invitiatves. Click here to read the policy brief.
Scent has created an Education Programme targeting school children between the ages of 11 and 12 to educate them about the importance of citizen science and environmental monitoring in their local environment through a dynamic lesson plan. Download the teacher’s guide and lesson plans here.

Scent Showcase Materials

July 3, 2019/by Linda Henriksson

Scent Showcase Materials

The Scent Showcase was held on 20 – 21 June 2019, demonstrating the brand new innovations in environmental monitoring. People had the chance to experience the Scent Toolbox and learn how its applications support citizen science and help to manage and prevent flooding. The programme included talks from the creators of the Scent Toolbox, an exhibition of the Scent project results, and followed by a live demonstration in the Kifisos River Basin.

Presenter CVs can be accessed here.

Presentations

Welcome Session

Introduction to Scent
Angelos Amditis – Scent Project Coordinator, Research Director, Institute of Communications and Computer Systems, Greece

Environmental Observation in the EU: Latest Developments and Perspectives
Izabela Freytag – Project Advisor, Executive Agency for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (EASME), European Commission

Smart Technologies for Citizen-Driven Flood Monitoring and Management

Scent applications: citizens in the epicenter of environmental monitoring
Stefano Tamascelli – CEO and Founder, XTeam Software Solutions srls, Italy

Land cover and land use annotation with automated methods
Joseph Shtok – Research Scientist, Computer Vision and Augmented Reality, IBM Research AI, Israel

Platform for managing, storing and providing data produced by citizens in an interoperable way
Valantis Tsiakos – Project Manager, Institute of Communications and Computer Systems, Greece

Use of crowdsourced data for improvement of flood modelling for better decision making
Ioana Popescu – Associate Professor of Hydroinformatics, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, the Netherlands

Interactive Demonstration

The Scent Toolbox
Daniele Miorandi, CEO, U-Hopper srl, Italy

Citizen Science Success Stories and Lessons Learned for Upscaling Such Initiatives

An overview of the LandSense Citizen Observatory and the WeObserve Ecosystem
Inian Moorthy, Research Scholar, Center for Earth Observation and Citizen Science, IIASA, Austria

Large-scale citizen observatories for flood monitoring and prevention: The Scent Project
Harris Georgiou, Search and Rescue / Emergency Medical Care – First Responder, Hellenic Rescue Team of Attica, Greece

From soil to sky: citizen scientists on a changing climate mission
Pavlos Georgiadis, Community Manager at GROW Observatory, Greece

Technical Posters

Scent Campaign Manager

Scent Explore

Scent Harmonisation Platform

Scent Measure

Scent Pilot Campaigns in the Danube Delta, Romania

Scent Pilot Campaigns in the Kifisos River Basin, Attica, Greece

Scent Showcase

March 15, 2019/by Linda Henriksson

Scent Showcase

The Scent Showcase took place in Athens, Greece on 20 – 21 June 2019. Policymakers, academics and industry experts from across Europe gathered in Athens for two days of interactive discussions, demonstrations and exhibitions of the latest innovations in citizen science and environmental monitoring. The Showcase was also the official presentation of the results of the Scent research project – a new suite of smart-technologies called the Scent Toolbox designed to support citizen engagement in environmental monitoring for the management and prevention of floods.

You can download the presentations from our panel discussions and the technical posters from our exhibition below. You can also check out highlight video from the Scent Showcase, as well as pictures from both days of the Showcase.

Read the full programme for the Showcase here.

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

“Environmental Observation in the EU: Latest Developments and Perspectives” – Izabela Freytag, Project Advisor, EASME, European Commission

“Scent Applications: Citizens in the Epicentre of Environmental Monitoring” – Stefano Tamascelli, CEO and Founder, XTeam Software Solutions srls, Italy

“Land-Cover and Land-Use Annotation with Automated Methods” – Joseph Shtok, Research Scientist, IBM Research AI, Israel

“Platform for Managing, Storing and Providing Data Produced by Citizens in an Interoperable Way” – Valantis Tsiakos, Project Manager, Institute of Communications and Computer Systems, Greece

“Use of Crowdsourced Data for Improvement of Flood Modelling for Better Decision Making” – Ioana Popescu, Associate Professor of Hydroinformatics, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, the Netherlands

“The Scent Toolbox” – Daniele Miorandi, CEO, U-Hopper srl, Italy

“An Overview of the LandSense Citizen Observatory and WeObserve Ecosystem” – Inian Moorthy, Research Scholar, Centre for Earth Observation and Citizen Science, IIASA, Austria

“Large-scale Citizen Observatories for Flood Monitoring and Prevention: The Scent Project” – Harris Georgiou, Search and Rescue/Emergency Medical Care – First Responder, HRTA, Greece

“From Soil to Sky: Citizen Scientists on a Changing Climate Mission” – Pavlos Georgiadis, Community Manager, GROW Observatory, Greece

Technical Posters

Scent Attica Pilot Campaign Results

Scent Danube Delta Pilot Campaign Results

Scent Explore

Scent Measure

Scent Harmonisation Platform

Scent Campaign Manager

Scent Education Programme

Scent Appathon

February 28, 2019/by Linda Henriksson

Scent Appathon

Scent is looking for enthusiastic developers to take part in the Scent Appathon and to compete in the rapid development of a new smartphone application. Participants will be tasked to build an app that can train citizen scientists how to better use the Scent Explore app. Scent Explore is a fun, new mobile gaming app developed by the Scent project, to incentivise citizens to explore nature and report changes in their local environment. Citizens use Scent Explore to capture hidden Scent creatures and collect valuable information about water velocity by taking short videos of objects floating down rivers. You can download Scent Explore here.

Participants are requested to develop an app that can teach citizens the best technique for capturing these videos. The app should allow users to practice their technique and provide feedback, tips and corrections on how to improve their skills. By improving citizens’ video technique, the winning app will support the collection of higher-quality data that is used by the Scent researchers to create models for the management and prevention of flooding!

You can view the presentation from our webinars here.

If you have any questions, you can also email appathon@scent-project.eu.

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

Scent Pilot Campaigns

August 10, 2018/by webmaster

Scent Pilot Campaigns

The Danube Delta, Romania

This is the largest wetland in Europe and is protected under UNESCO as a unique biosphere reserve. The Danube Delta suffers from human interventions leading to dramatic changes. These interventions include damming large areas for agricultural use and intensive forestry. They result in disturbances of the water and ecological balance and even the loss of specific habitats.

Click to learn more about the Danube Delta pilot campaign

Kifisos River Basin, Attica, Greece

The Scent pilot in Greece relates to the urban environment around the Kifisos river in Attica. This covers app. 380km2, and almost 60% of its watershed is urbanised (metropolitan Athens area). Its hydrographic network has been drastically altered due to distinct land-use and 68% of the basin is occupied by urban expanses – host to 4 million citizens.

Click to learn more about the Kifisos River pilot campaign

Scent 2018 Pilot Campaign Results

Scent Pilot Campaigns 2018 -2019

Danube Delta National Institute

November 29, 2016/by webmaster

Danube Delta National Institute

Scent Toolbox Requirements and Architecture

165 Babadag Street
Tulcea 820112
Romania

Web: www.ddni.ro

DDNI, established in 1970, is a Romanian State-owned public institution under the authority of Education and Scientific Research Ministry. It focuses on basic and applied research in the field of ecology and environmental protection. The institute provides scientific support for the management of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve (DDBR) and other wetland areas of national and international interest for biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Since 2009, the institute has been a sub-unit of the National Institute for Research and Development for Environmental Protection.

The DDNI has extensive experience in leading multidisciplinary projects across a range of issues, including environmental impact assessment, environmental protection, geographic information systems and sustainable use. They also have considerable expertise in land use analysis by earth observation. Furthermore, the DDNI has participated in numerous EU FP projects and other EU-funded interregional projects, such as NATURNET – REDIME, GEM-CON-BIO and DANUBEPARKS. The institute’s expertise and potential was recognised at European level in 2000 when it was selected as a Centre of Excellence for Deltas and Wetlands within the European Commission’s Centres of Excellence Programme.

Role in the project

The Danube Delta National Institute (DDNI) will lead the work package on the Scent toolbox requirements and architecture. The institute will play a key role in defining end-user and stakeholder needs relevant for the Scent toolbox in order to form an active and self-sustainable citizen observatory. It will collect information on existing in-situ monitoring systems in the Danube Delta pilot site and organise workshops/interviews to identify knowledge and information gaps relevant to the pilot. DDNI has vast experience in research on environmental issues relevant to the Danube Delta. It will provide the GEOSS portal with valuable information on flood hazards and vulnerability in the test area of the Danube Delta.

ALL PROJECT PARTNERS

SOCIAL STREAMS

About Scent

November 19, 2016/by webmaster

About Scent

Smart Toolbox for Engaging Citizens into a People-Centric Observation Web

Scent is a European Union research project funded under the Horizon 2020 programme. The project runs between 2016 and 2019 and comprises 10 partner organisations across 6 countries.

Europe has the capacity and potential to lead a global citizen movement aimed at land use monitoring through a people-centred observation web. Scent will be this movement.

Scent will engage citizens in environmental monitoring and enable them to become the ‘eyes’ of the policy makers. In doing so citizens will support the monitoring of land-cover/use changes using their smartphones and tablets.

The project will demonstrate the huge potential of citizen observation and monitoring of the environment. A people-led online observation movement will capture land-cover use and changes through user-friendly tools and technologies, The Scent Toolbox. This will complement existing forms of monitoring such as satellite and remote sensing which are costly and less dynamic.

The Scent Toolbox; a crowd-sourcing platform, gaming applications, an authoring tool, an intelligence engine and numerical models, allows citizens, policy makers and other users to freely use Scent technologies to contribute to the aims of the project. The opinions of citizens, policy makers and communication experts will be taken into account during the design of the Scent Toolbox to ensure it is practical and user-friendly.

The Scent toolbox will be tested in two large scale pilots; the urban case of the Kifisos river in Attica, Greece and the rural case of the Danube Delta in Romania. The impact of the toolbox in the assessment of flood risks and flooding patterns will be evaluated.

The consortium covers the complete stakeholder chain: industries in machine learning, SMEs in crowd-sourcing, gaming and awareness-raising, leading research institutes with expertise in hydrodynamic modelling, data harmonisation and authoring tools and environmental monitoring, NGOs at the pilot sites and policy makers/public bodies.

Project Objectives

Design, develop and implement a people-centric observation web offered in the form of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)-compliant web services and resources to the GEOSS portal.
Develop the innovative Scent crowd-sourcing platform to collect image as well as textual information from citizens; as a result, this will extend the in-situ infrastructure with citizen-sourced observations.
Implement the Scent intelligence engine, which will use innovative machine learning techniques to classify and annotate images and text sourced from citizens as well as existing open platforms.
Design and develop a serious gaming application to annotate unutilised images from popular open platforms, e.g. Flickr and Panoramio, as complementary data sources on land-cover and land-use changes.
Quantify the impact of land-cover/use changes to flood risk maps and spatio-temporal flooding patterns.
Design a simple authoring tool for policy makers to customise the Scent toolbox according to target group, regional or social characteristics.
Test, evaluate and validate the Scent smart toolbox in two large scale pilots of great environmental impact; the urban case of the Kifisos river in Attica and the rural case of the Danube Delta.
Increase the active engagement of citizens as individuals, citizen associations as well as local authorities in monitoring their environment through the creation of a citizen movement.

Methodology

The citizen-centric and participatory Scent methodology is divided into three phases:

The requirements and architecture design phase includes a study and analysis of user requirements and needs for a sustainable and active citizen observatory.
The technical development and innovation phase consists of the design, research, development and implementation of innovative tools and solutions that make up the Scent toolbox.
The integration and large scale demonstration phase involves integrating the solution and ensuring through formal testing that Scent toolbox components are interoperable and fully functional. In this phase, two large scale pilots will be carried out to evaluate and validate the Scent citizen observatory.

Scent and the Open Research Data Pilot

Scent participates in the Pilot on Open Research Data launched by the European Commission along with the Horizon 2020 programme.

The Open Research Data Pilot aims to improve and maximise access to and re-use of research data generated by Horizon 2020 projects. It takes into account the need to balance openness and protection of scientific information, commercialisation and Intellectual Property Rights, privacy concerns, security as well as data management and preservation questions. While open access to research data thereby becomes applicable by default in Horizon 2020, the Commission also recognises that there are good reasons to keep some or even all research data generated in a project closed. The Commission therefore provides robust opt-out possibilities at any stage.

The Scent consortium supports open science and the large potential benefits to the European innovation and economy stemming from allowing reusing data at a larger scale. The majority of data produced in the project may therefore be published with open access.

The Scent Concept

Scent aims to demonstrate the huge potential of an active citizen observatory that will complement existing infrastructure through the Scent toolbox. It will lead to a significant pool of observations on changes in land cover and related environmental phenomena. Data will be fed via web services into existing repositories, such as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) portal. Scent will provide policy-makers with a near real-time view of land-use changes while directly involving citizens in the decision-making process.

The Scent concept is built around three pillars:

Pillar I: Increased involvement of citizens in the process of land cover and land use monitoring through a set of participatory solutions

Pillar II: Better use of available data, repositories and monitoring systems through innovative tools and algorithms

Pillar III: Development of a co-design strategy, involving both citizens and public authorities with the aim of creating a sustainable citizen observatory

Illustration of the Scent Toolbox

Impact

The impact of the project will be felt in many ways, especially in the environmental, societal, technical and industrial field.

Environmental
Citizens often feel that their efforts won’t have much impact on environmental policies and climate change. Scent will show that citizens in fact can have a real impact in environmental monitoring and identification of flood risks.

Major environmental agencies and decision-makers have agreed to promote the project outcomes, which will guarantee EU-wide environmental impact.

Societal
Scent will foster innovation and create jobs in SMEs, which will help fight unemployment in Europe.

Scent will also improve the accuracy of existing flood risk maps by more than 15% and thus make areas close to floodplains less vulnerable to disasters.

Scent promotes an open method of coordinating environmental policies. It will include regional environmental groups, public-private partnerships and citizen communities in land-use monitoring, which will encourage innovative governance schemes.

Technical
Scent will bring about new technological developments and products through the SCENT toolbox, and citizens’ contributions to environmental data will be fed directly into the Scent intelligence engine. These will be key in generating precise and up-to-date land-use maps and flood risk maps for decision-makers.

Scent will also extend the GEOSS and Copernicus repositories through frequent updates of local monitoring of land-use changes using the Scent Toolbox.

Industrial
Scent will introduce low-cost state-of-the-art tools that will encourage further innovation and boost the development of new people-centric apps, products and services.

The Scent observatory will promote Europe in the global environmental monitoring market. Citizen engagement will foster the creation of new SMEs and boost innovation in current European SMEs. Scent will reveal an untapped potential for the gaming industry and the crowd-sourcing and social media industries to enter the environmental field.

Posts

Pages

Scent Toolbox

What is the Scent Toolbox?

Why use the Scent Toolbox?

Who is it for?

How does it work?

Scent Toolbox – Applications

Explore your surroundings with Scent Explore!

Scent Collaborate

Scent Measure

Scent Campaign Manager

Scent Crowdsourcing Platform

Scent Harmonisation Platform

Scent Flood Models

Scent Water Tools

Scent Map Segmentation Tool

Scent Intelligence Engine and Image Analysis Tool

How can I organise a Scent Campaign?

The Danube Delta, Romania

SOCIAL STREAMS

Scent Training

Scent Authority Training

Scent Citizens Training

Scent Cookbook

ScentVR

Additional Resources

Scent Showcase Materials

Presentations

Welcome Session

Smart Technologies for Citizen-Driven Flood Monitoring and Management

Interactive Demonstration

Citizen Science Success Stories and Lessons Learned for Upscaling Such Initiatives

Technical Posters

Scent Showcase

Welcome Session

Smart Technologies for Citizen-Driven Flood Monitoring and Management

Interactive Demonstration: The Scent Toolbox

Roundtable: Challenges and Enables of Citizen Science in Flood Monitoring and Management

Citizen Science Success Stories and Lessons Learned from Upscaling Such Initiatives

Field Trip to the Kifisos River Basin

Presentations

Technical Posters

Scent Appathon

How to Participate

The Prize

Instructions

Criteria

Scent Pilot Campaigns

The Danube Delta, Romania

Kifisos River Basin, Attica, Greece

Danube Delta National Institute

Scent Toolbox Requirements and Architecture

Role in the project

ALL PROJECT PARTNERS

SOCIAL STREAMS

About Scent

Smart Toolbox for Engaging Citizens into a People-Centric Observation Web

Horizon 2020