The fourth article in our 'CS landscape series' looks at Citizen Science projects in Belgium. The ensuing analysis is based on a critical review of 31 initiatives that were organised or are still running in the country. Interested readers can download the dataset developed during the mapping process where the full sample is presented and analysed in greater detail. For methodology and limitations of the research undertaken, please refer to the foundational article.
We reviewed 31 Belgian CS initiatives, mostly from Flanders and Brussels, which makes this sample the largest of the four ones created. Even so, 31 represents only a limited share of the actual landscape, whose true scale can be estimated based on information provided by Iedereen Wetenschapper (“Everyone Scientist”), a project aggregator platform. Filtering the database by country (the whole of Belgium) and project type (both past and ongoing) yields a whopping result of just over 180 initiatives. One would need a separate project with a time horizon of several months to thoroughly analyse them all. Since this is not possible within the scope of D2.2, we took a more pragmatic approach whereby priority was given to projects in the field of air quality and traffic monitoring (primary cluster).
Of course, the Belgian CS landscape is much broader than this. It covers areas as diverse as nature, history, health, astronomy. To do justice to this diversity, as well as to be consistent with other geographic samples, we decided to include in the Belgian review projects that monitor biodiversity, water and soil quality, odour and noise pollution, as well as those with links to cosmology, social sciences, humanities and arts. The names and distribution of all 31 initiatives are provided below.
General overview
EU-funded projects
Examples of EU projects with CS activities in Flanders are WeCount and Ground Truth 2.0. WeCount had a pilot in Leuven that deployed Telraam sensors to support the implementation of local mobility policies e.g. traffic calming measures, school streets, pedestrian zones. The Telraam device is essentially a combination of three things: a Raspberry Pi microcomputer, sensors and a low-resolution camera. To start counting traffic, people just had to mount the device on a window inside their home. Eventually, around 200 devices were deployed in several parts of the city, providing continuous multimodal data streams on local mobility flows.
Ground Truth 2.0 established several citizen observatories in the EU and Africa. One such observatory was set up in Mechelen. Called ‘Meet Mee Mechelen’, the observatory wanted to improve the dialogue between citizens and decision makers by creating a platform where they can share information on the local living environment, including air quality. Several measurement campaigns were organised by the observatory, in which around 50 citizen scientists took part. Volunteers spent several weeks collecting data by cycling around the city with sensors, producing a total of 2800 km and 280 hours of observations.
Domestic initiatives (local)
While there are many local examples we could mention here, the two that stand out are Curieuze Neuzen (2016) and HasselAIR. There were two editions of Curieuze Neuzen. The one in 2016 was local in scope. Its goal was to measure spatial variation of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in Antwerp. Arguably, Curieuze Neuzen 2016 was one of the first large-scale, air quality-monitoring local CS projects that deployed thousands of sensors (n=2000) across the city: near hospitals, parks, bridges, schools, offices, public buildings and residential homes. At each location, two sampling tubes were fixed to a v-shaped panel that in turn was attached to a window frame facing the street. To ensure quality control, a similar setup was deployed at 8 reference stations located in the study area. Building on the success of the 2016 edition, University of Antwerp, together with other stakeholders, launched a follow-up campaign in 2018. But this one was on a regional scale, so we’ll cover it in the next section.
Another interesting local initiative was HASSELair. It was started by the UC Leuven-Limburg university to address the lack of real-time measurements of air pollution (PM2.5, PM10) around Hasselt. Using CS as a solution, the project trained citizens to assemble static sensors for measuring air quality near their homes. In addition, dynamic measurements were taken while people moved about the city with a mobile Airbeam sensor. These were transferred from one citizen to another after 90 days.
Domestic initiatives (regional)
As already mentioned, Curieuze Neuzen 2018 is a follow-up to the 2016 edition, only this time activities covered the whole of Flanders, not just Antwerp. Given this scale, a much bigger CS force was needed to cover the entire region. So in the end, the project managed to recruit 20.000 volunteers who measured air quality around their homes, helping create a detailed map of air quality in urban and rural areas across Flanders. They used the same sampling tubes as in the first edition to measure NO2 concentrations caused largely by traffic. Arguably, CurieuzeNeuzen Flanders is the largest CS project on air quality ever undertaken.
Supporting initiatives
Projects in this category include Scivil and Iedereen Wetenschapper (“Everyone Scientist”). Strictly speaking, the two are not CS projects per se. They don’t recruit volunteers, organise measurement campaigns, collect or process field data. But they do play an important role in the CS ecosystem, by nurturing it through extensive support and guidance (not funding though), and by giving visibility to past, current and future CS activities on their platforms. We first encountered this project type in Germany i.e. Burger Schaffen Wissen ("Citizens Create Knowledge”). So we were really excited to find not one but two CS ‘supporters’ in Flanders. Given the scale and depth of the Belgian landscape, we are making a cautious assumption that the presence of supporting initiatives like Scivil, Iedereen Wetenschapper and Burger Schaffen Wissen can be associated with a more mature CS landscape. So what exactly do Scivil and Iedereen Wetenschapper do?
Scivil is the Flemish knowledge centre for Citizen Science. It is financed by the Flemish government but does not offer funding to CS projects. However, Scivil can screen applications for funding and offer advice to CS projects on how to increase their chances of getting money from the regional government. Other than that, Scivil organises workshops and public events, develops guides and handbooks as a way of supporting the CS community and bringing CS closer to the masses. As well as working with grassroot communities, Scivil cooperates with scientists and regularly advises government agencies on when and how to use CS. Scivil does have a collection of CS projects, but it pales in comparison to that of Iedereen Wetenschapper.
Iedereen Wetenschapper provides a vast, continuously updated collection of CS projects (over 180), apparently covering the whole of Belgium, though we didn’t check how many of them are from Wallonia. The overall mission of Iedereen Wetenschapper is to bring science and society closer together by i) motivating people to participate in scientific research and ii) making scientists enthusiastic about collaboration with non-experts. The platform ensures matchmaking in two ways. First, people can express interest in projects they want to join. Sometimes people can join projects right away. Other times, the platform will put interested participants in touch with relevant coordinators, who will then contact volunteers at an appropriate time. Second, project organisers can register their initiative and try to recruit volunteers by announcing when and how they can contribute. It goes without saying that Iedereen Wetenschapper would be an ideal place to announce CS experiments planned by the COMPAIR team in Flanders. So, we see Scivil more as a consulting and advisory platform and Iedereen Wetenschapper more of a database and a networking portal.
Primary cluster
Stakeholder engagement
Pretty much all projects avoided shallow engagement whereby volunteers have only guides and templates to rely on during CS activities. The only exception is InfluencAir, a finished project in Brussels that followed Sensor.Community’s principle of minimal intervention. Other projects organised several training workshops prior to data collection, while some continued to involve participants in different capacities afterwards. WeCount, for example, organised several online sessions to teach participants about Telraam sensors and the installation process. The sensors were then delivered to citizen scientists who had to install them themselves based on the workshop guidance and additional instructional materials.[1] The iSCAPE project went further than this. After data analysis and visualisation, participants were invited to another workshop to reflect on the findings, to discuss and plan next steps for their local Living Lab.
In some projects people had to pay for sensors (e.g. CurieuzenAir, Luchtpijp), while in others they were handed out for free e.g. WeCount, HASSELair. It’s not clear whether charging for a sensor has any influence on the number of volunteers a project can recruit and retain. While the cost is certainly a barrier to participation, it can just as well be argued that by paying for something, people feel more compelled to participate. Looking at CurieuzenAir’s experience, the fact that the project charged a minimum price of 5 euros for the NO2 tubes did not deter thousands of people from applying for the measurement kit. In fact, their measurement kits were oversubscribed once registration closed, with the project receiving 5000 applications for just 3000 kits.
Quite a few projects measured air pollution in and around schools e.g. BikeSTEM for Schools, Luchtpijp, CurieuzenAir, HASSELair, Curieuze Neuzen, AIRbezen. Some projects designed special workshops for primary and secondary school students (e.g. HASSELair), some developed special packages for schools that included lessons, films, experiments and a few exercises (e.g. Luchtpijp), some even added gamification elements in the form of a leaders board to promote competitive spirit among participating institutions e.g. AIRbezen. All this is a welcome sign that local stakeholders (teachers, parents, policy makers etc.) are becoming increasingly aware of the risks that air pollution poses to young people, and that they see CS as a potential solution that can help both measure the scale of the problem and raise awareness about it among pupils.
Assuming that schools cater to pupils from different backgrounds, certain hard-to-reach groups (e.g. children from low-income families) were most likely represented in the six projects listed above, though they themselves did not acknowledge this fact. The only projects that made an effort to target hard-to-reach groups are CurieuzenAir and WeCount. In WeCount socially vulnerable people were considered at several stages (scoping, data awareness, legacy). Nevertheless, in the Summative Pilot Report (D4.1), WeCount openly admitted that "the goal of reaching the hard-to-reach and vulnerable groups was not met."[2] In CurieuzenAir, one of the goals was to engage all members of society independent of sociocultural status, gender, age or education level. This was achieved in two ways, by including in the network of 3000 sensors, measurement locations that specifically connect to people with low interest in CS, and by reaching out to local organisations that focus on health and poverty issues. This allowed the project to reach out to vulnerable and excluded groups and invite them to take part in the project.
As regards other members of the urban value chain, the full quadruple helix was achieved, based on a list of mentioned stakeholders, by CurieuzenAir, Meet Mee Mechelen (Ground Truth 2.0) and Curieuze Neuzen Antwerp. In projects like iSCAPE, HASSELair and BikeSTEM for Schools, the engagement amounted to triple helix at best, with industry often missing from the value network.
Looking at cluster’s leaders when it comes to the volunteering force, projects with the highest number of citizen scientists are Curieuze Neuzen Vlaanderen (20.000), CurieuzenAir (3000), Curieuze Neuzen Antwerp (2000), BikeSTEM for Schools (1200). In other projects that reported this data, the number of volunteers was in the range of 50-300.
No project in the primary cluster made a direct reference to ECSA’s 10 principles. But this doesn’t mean that none of the principles were followed. At the core of iSCAPE methodology was a Living Lab approach, with a strong focus on inclusion. In hackAIR, besides data collection, users got involved in coding and training. In WeCount, citizens co-designed a Telraam platform where citizen scientists could find tools to analyse data, tools to understand the data analysis, tools to build context around data, tools to initiate a dialogue between citizens about data, and tools to initiate action based on data. All this shows that, at least in some of the projects, citizen scientists had a meaningful engagement that extended beyond data collection (principle 4). So some of the principles are being followed in practice, if not in name.
Data collection and analysis
Data collection tools for air quality varied depending on pollutant and exposure type measured. NO2 was measured using traditional diffusion tubes in AIRbezen, Curieuze Neuzen (both 2016 and 2018 editions) and CurieuzenAir, whereas in iSCAPE a more technical, Arduino-compatible Smart Citizen Kit was used. For particulate matter, a clear preference for Nova PM SDS011 that was popularised by Sensor.Community was observed across several projects: AIRbezen, Leuvenair, hackAIR, Luchtpijp, InfluenceAir. HASSELair, which also measured dynamic exposure, did so using a low-cost, palm-sized AirBeam sensor. In the case of traffic monitoring projects WeCount and BikeSTEM for Schools, it was a Telraam device and a simple smartphone app with GPS, respectively.
Pretty much all projects presented their findings in some written form (report, blog etc.) and provided a map-based visualisation on the website. Some used third-party platforms like Sensor.Community (InfluencAir, Luchtpijp) and Telraam (WeCount). Some provided personalised reports to citizen scientists. In WeCount, for example, there was additional analysis at the individual device level, accessible only to the device owner and the project team. Each participant received a personalised monthly report, every month. Through guided analysis of the data, the team gave participants tools for basic analysis to get a discussion going and generally to educate participants on how to interpret traffic count data. This type of analysis was low-threshold and aimed to engage a broad audience among participants. The unguided analysis was intended to allow participants inside and outside the project to interact with the data and conduct their own analyses without normative instructions or guidance from the project team.
CurieuzenAir also provided personalised reports to citizen scientists after lab results were ready, but we were more impressed by the project’s collaboration with BRUZZ and De Standaard to disseminate findings. BRUZZ is a cross-platform that publishes and broadcasts news and culture programs about the Brussels Capital Region. De Standaard is a Flemish daily newspaper. Both media outlets published project findings as interactive maps on their website.[3],[4] Without statistics on usage and visits it’s hard to judge the true scale of this tactic’s success. Nevertheless, we think collaboration with media outlets can give dissemination an extra boost that could help spread the word about project results further and faster than would have been possible if only project’s internal channels were used.
Impact
Technical innovations that impressed us the most were those that had an impact on modelling support and open data. Apparently, data collected by Curieuze Neuzen Flanders helped test the ATMOSYS computer model[5] developed by VITO for the Flemish Environment Agency. By improving the model’s predictive capabilities with CS data, the project contributed to a better estimation of the population exposure to NO2 and its effects on public health.
As regards open data, while most projects displayed their findings on a map or in reports, only Leuvenair and iSCAPE went so far as to publish their datasets on Zenodo. Leuvenair’s dataset contains 42,203,945 measurements from 112 sensors (Nova Fitness SDS011) that were placed in and around the city of Leuven.[6] iSCAPE published numerous datasets with information on how sensors were developed, what data was obtained from outdoor deployment, and what data was generated during a simulation exercise.[7]
Finding evidence of behavioural change wasn’t easy, mainly because relevant information often wasn’t provided. We don’t know if it’s because projects didn’t survey participants to collect this information, or if they did, chose not to publish the findings because feedback pointed to the contrary i.e. lack of impact. Another challenge when assessing personal impact was to distinguish project objectives from the actual change that may or may not have happened as a result of CS. Quite a few projects claimed laudable outcomes e.g. that they help young people to be more active (BikeSTEM for Schools), that people would be able to pick alternative routes to reduce personal exposure to black carbon (ExpAIR), that people will become more aware of the importance of air quality for a healthy environment (Curieuze Neuzen). But without a proper survey asking people whether these and other impacts have materialised, such lofty ambitions risk remaining what they are (ambitions, objectives) without amounting to anything else.
That said, a handful of projects actually made an effort to measure personal impact, with results showing a mixed outcome. Leuvenair clearly hoped that CS would elicit some activities on the part of participants after data collection. However, in its final report the project concluded that the original expectation that citizens would start working with data wasn’t fulfilled.
Impact assessment by Meet Mee Mechelen was more upbeat. The project argued that its citizen observatory produced a much more detailed picture of local air quality, which was missing in the past. Since data was validated and concerns that people had about air quality became scientifically grounded, the topic gained traction as a shared story, motivating more people in Mechelen to get involved.
The results of Hasselt's Living Lab (iSCAPE) were equally positive. The project even shared a quote from one of the participants to support this: "Small changes in my daily pattern can have a big impact on the battle against the warming of the beautiful blue planet! Provided that a larger number of cohabitants want to participate. Every little effort counts." iSCAPE recommends providing users with continuous updates in simple, personalised ways, as general information on health or environmental benefits is usually not enough to trigger long-lasting transformative impacts.
The project whose work on behaviour change impressed us the most is hackAIR. In its evaluation, it investigated changes in beliefs, knowledge and self-reported behaviours of citizens that participated in the sensor building workshops in Brussels. An experimental design was chosen to investigate the actual change with a pre-test/post-test design, and a control group. In total, 58 participants responded to both surveys, 24 as part of the experimental group and 34 as part of the control group. Both groups were also promised an incentive: a €10 gift voucher in a popular nature-related shop or an air-purifier plant Calathea.
Evaluation results show that, as a result of CS, participants generally felt more heard by local policy makers on the issue of air quality in Brussels. Moreover, hackAIR’s tools positively influenced participants’ knowledge of air quality. People reported knowing more about what air quality is and where to find information about it, as well as its sources and impacts. hackAIR researchers found that one specific type of behaviour was positively and significantly impacted by the experiment: soft mobility. This means that the experimental group engaged more than the control group in soft mobility (e.g. walking, biking, taking public transport) instead of driving a car. Finally, researchers found that the hackAIR’s behaviour change experiment did have an effect (about 5% increase) on the general air quality profile of participants.
Moving on to policy impact, oftentimes projects did not allude to any policies they have or could influence in project materials. Those that had policy makers as a target audience did mention potential benefits for this stakeholder group. However, such benefits appeared more as a general project objective - for example, to provide interesting and useful data for policy in Flanders (BikeSTEM for Schools) - than a result of impact assessment.
Nevertheless, we found several projects that demonstrated really strong potential to influence local mobility policy (WeCount), education policy (iSCAPE) and citizen-local authority interaction (Ground Truth 2.0/Meet Mee Mechelen).
The legacy of WeCount in Leuven was secured by the city’s expressed commitment to maintain the Telraam network post-project. In fact, the local authority wanted Telraam to become a permanent asset within Leuven that can be used to support the monitoring of implementation of any past and future mobility measures e.g. school streets, green zones.
In Hasselt, the iSCAPE project initiated a discussion with the local authority regarding the use of CS sensor kits in Masters and Bachelors thesis projects that would be undertaken over the coming years with a view to addressing issues linked to city mobility and air pollution.
As part of Ground Truth 2.0, the CS observatory Meet Mee Mechelen interviewed participants, who reported that: 1) citizens gained more recognition by policy makers, 2) air quality became a much more important topic among both groups, and 3) politicians started to talk more about the issue in their campaigns. Nevertheless, although everyone kept listening to each other, some power play was observed between citizens and policymakers on different occasions. For example, city employees joining the observatory were still regarded as representatives of the policies the citizen group was fighting against. When the city offered to host the observatory’s platform on the municipal website, many citizens objected to the proposal. This is an important piece of information that draws attention to potential risks and conflicts that may arise when antagonistic groups are brought together to work on hot topics like air pollution. At COMPAIR we must see to it that conflict resolution principles are well incorporated in our stakeholder strategy to ensure a meaningful and cordial environment for all.
Secondary cluster
Highlights from other initiatives
In the ‘secondary’ cluster, projects with the highest number of volunteers/test sites are those that monitor biodiversity and soil quality. Mijn Tuinlab (“My Gardenlab”) has 40.941 garden labs across Flanders. The now familiar Curieuze Neuzen project branched out into a new area (soil monitoring), where it currently works with 4400 volunteers to help analyse soil quality and its resilience against drought. Around the same number of volunteers (4000) contribute to the Animals Under Wheels project, having made 70000 observations on dead animals since 2008. Projects in other fields either don’t provide information on their volunteering force or have less than 1000 citizen scientists in their network.
Some projects follow a hands-off approach to stakeholder engagement e.g. AstroSounds, Bugs 2 the Rescue. They issue lots of tips, self-study guides and FAQs that volunteers must go through on their own if they want to learn how to proceed. But some projects offer a deeper engagement by training volunteers in-person or online, usually through workshops.
We didn’t find evidence that hard-to-reach groups were actively involved in CS activities within the secondary cluster. Potentially this might have happened in projects that worked with schools (e.g. Butterfly, Bugs 2 the Rescue) provided that these institutions weren’t, what one would call, elite. Snapp Nature was the only project that claimed that one of its objectives was to encourage citizens of all ages and backgrounds to become scientists. Whether and how many hard-to-reach groups participated in Snapp Nature could not be established during the review.
As regards other members of the urban value chain, several projects managed to achieve the triple helix model. An example would be the odour-related Omniscientis project that involved the 'source of nuisance' (industry, farming, wastewater plants, chemical plants etc.), citizens living in the area and authorities at various levels to address the issue of odour pollution in Wallonia. The quadruple helix was achieved by at least two projects judging by the types of stakeholders engaged. The Butterfly project has brought together Flemish schools, researchers, companies and local authorities to study weather conditions in urban and rural areas using meteorological sensors. Curieuze Neuzen in de Tuin has worked with citizens, schools, companies and municipalities to create a soil map for Flanders.
Although ECSA’s 10 principles weren’t openly acknowledged by any of the projects, there is indirect evidence to suggest that some of them actually were followed, if not in name. In the Butterfly project, pupils, teachers and parents were involved in different stages, from installing the weather station, to gathering and analysing data, to presenting results (principle 4). Scivil, which supports the CS community in Flanders, appears to promote ECSA's 10 principles too, if indirectly. For example, Scivil believes that through CS citizens can contribute to scientific research and projects regardless of their background knowledge, and can also initiate projects themselves (principle 1).
In the secondary cluster, data collection tools vary depending on project, from chunky Davis Vantage Pro 2 sensors (Butterfly), to more compact mobile apps (Snapp nature, Animals Under Wheels, Omniscientis, NoiseTube), to something in-between i.e. sensor kits (Bugs 2 the Rescue). In some projects there are no sensors at all. For instance, AstroSounds volunteers learn how to recognise stars by listening to their sounds, whereas in MamaMito volunteers must submit their ancestral data if they want to find relationships in the maternal line.[8]
When presenting their results, most projects opted for an online map published on the project website. One example that stands out is Curieuze Neuzen in de Tuin, which in addition to its own website also has findings displayed on De Standaard.[9] It’s not the first time this Flemish daily cooperates with CS projects as a dissemination partner. Readers will remember that De Standaard recently provided a platform for CurieuzenAir to display their NO2 results.
As regards technical impact, projects that drew our attention are those that:
Made their sensors easy to assemble: Butterfly’s weather station has been developed in such a way as to allow students to easily build and place it themselves anywhere they want
Made an effort to facilitate reuse of their tools: NoiseTube ensured that external developers can extend its mobile app in whichever way they see fit. The source code is available under GNU LGPL v2.1 licence on Gitlab
Provided advice on how to handle data in CS projects: Scivil published a data charter to guide CS stakeholders on how to generate and store their data, as well as how to make it findable, reusable and interoperable[10]
Behavioural impact was harder to gauge because most projects provided scant information in this regard, and when they did, it was formulated more as an ambition rather than a conclusion established through some form of assessment e.g. participants will develop greater sensitivity to and awareness about the exotics problem and biological control (Bugs 2 the Rescue), people will learn how to scientifically describe someone’s personality (Citizen’s talk), people will be more enthused about genealogy and CS (MamaMito). One project that actually demonstrated some influence on participants’ behaviour is Curieuze Neuzen in de Tuin. Specifically, it managed to motivate people to carry on with CS activities after the initial round ended, with 3000 people registering for the follow-up campaign out of 4400 who took part in the first round.
As regards policy impact, several projects demonstrate strong potential to influence
Educational policy: by providing a platform for STEM lessons on gardens (My Gardenlab), by providing new teaching material for STEM education that enables students to work with their own family history (MamaMito), and by supporting the biology curriculum in Flemish schools (Bugs 2 the Rescue)
Urban planning: by broadening environmental sensing in cities, especially around under-appreciated problems like noise pollution, which don’t generally get a lot of resources/attention in local administrations (NoiseTube). Environmental CS sensing projects could be used by policy makers in different ways e.g. to develop mobility plans (policy preparation), to understand if noise levels decline after certain measures have been implemented (policy evaluation)
Transport policy: by providing information on the impact the road network is having on nature (Animals Under Wheels). For example, the highway between Leuven and Liège turned out to be extremely dangerous for wildlife because only the high-speed railway line next to it is fenced off. Animals trying to cross the highway from north to south collide with the grid between the highway and the railroad and have no choice but to go back where they came from, back over the highway.
Local CS policy: by providing a hands-on manual for towns and cities on when and how to use CS[11]
Conclusion
The Belgian sample has 31 initiatives, representing a mix of small-scale local initiatives (city-level), regional initiatives that are active only in Flanders, Brussels or Wallonia, initiatives or pilots linked to EU projects, and initiatives that don’t organise any CS activities as such, but that are on a mission to support existing or would-be CS projects. The Belgian sample has the largest primary cluster comprising 12 air related and two traffic related initiatives. Here, most projects avoided a hands-off approach, preferring a deeper engagement instead. Where this happened, participants were involved in pre- and post-data collection activities that ranged from brainstorming, workshops and training, to analysis, reflection and planning. Based on evaluation results of several projects (hackAIR, iSCAPE, Ground Truth 2.0), the most common benefits to CS participants are greater awareness of and improved motivation to get involved in air issues, as well as higher propensity to engage in soft-mobility behaviour. Policy impacts were largely limited to expressions of interest on the part of local authorities to mainstream CS kits in areas of mobility and education. One exception that stands out is CurieuzeNeuzen Flanders. Among the 20000 participants were 784 schools. 80% of those that participated did so in order to use project results to improve teaching practice. Moreover 39% reported to have informed their students about air quality findings and encouraged them to use active transportation modes more often. Finally, Belgium is the only country where we saw media outlets (newspapers) participating in CS projects as dissemination partners. Case in point is De Standaard, a Flemish daily that published CS results of two projects as online maps on its website (Curieuze Neuzen in de Tuin, CurieuzenAir).
References
[1] The online/pick-up format was adopted in lieu of the physical training because of Covid-19 restrictions. [2] https://we-count.net/deliverables [3] https://www.standaard.be/curieuzenair-kaart#11.2/50.8316/4.4014 [4] https://www.bruzz.be/curieuzenair#11/50.84/4.36 [5] https://vito.be/en/product/atmosys-air-quality-management-system [6] https://zenodo.org/record/4936982#.YkbgTCgzaPq [7] https://www.iscapeproject.eu/iscape-data/ [8] AstroSounds would correspond to level two (distributed intelligence) and MamaMito to level one (passive sensors) in the typology of participation levels developed by Haklay (2013) [9] https://www.standaard.be/curieuzeneuzen-in-de-tuin/sponskracht [10] https://www.scivil.be/en/book/data-charter-and-guide-citizen-science [11] https://www.scivil.be/en/book/citizen-science-local-government