The ACTION team is happy to welcome onboard four new pilots that will kick off their activities today.
The four new pilots have been selected in the second ACTION open call and will participate, together with one more resuming activities after a pause imposed by the Covid pandemic, in the second edition of the ACTION Accelerator, an intensive support programme that will help projects to become more participatory, rigorous and inclusive.
The new pilots are:
Walk up Aniene, will implement its actions in the Aniene Valley Nature Reserve, which is located in the North East periphery or Rome (Italy). Citizens will be engaged in individual observation and data gathering through mobile technologies. This will provide key data on an essential natural area resisting urbanisation and anthropic pressure. With the help of citizens, it will be possible to map environmental criticalities and support responsible institutions to plan environmental restoration measures.
The pilot is led by A sud, with the support of Insieme per l’aniene and CDCA – Centro Documentazione Conflitti Ambientali (center for the documentation of environmental conflicts).
Restart Data Workbench addresses the global dimensions of pollution and consumerism, the impacts of our take-make-throw economy. The pilot is run by The Restart Project, a large community that – through repair events – tries to extend the lifespans of imported goods such as electronic devices so as to reduce their carbon footprint. Indeed, around 80% of a small electronic devices’ carbon footprint is emitted before it even reaches European shores. With Restart data workbench volunteers will be engaged in analysing data about attempted repairs, investigating the environmental impacts of the products repaired and using the results to influence policy discussions.
Mapping mobility will engage citizens in collecting spatially referenced mobility data pertaining to their patterns of active travel within their community. They will use the outputs from this data to encourage and educate their community and local authorities about sustainable travel opportunities/barriers for the town, thus tackling issues of local transport-related pollution.
The pilot builds on the previous Zero Carbon Rugeley project that works towards an innovative design for a town-wide Smart Local Energy System (SLES) in Rugeley (WestMidland, England). The pilot is led by the Institute for Sustainable Futures at Keele University.
Open Soil Atlas will create an open-source co-learning centre for the local community of Berlin with the aim of educating the public and raising awareness about soil quality and fertility and the correlation between healthy soil and healthy communities. Citizens will learn how to make observations, test soil, interpret results and draw conclusions.
Findings will provide policymakers and urban ecology initiatives with indicators as to which areas are best suited for agricultural purposes and which require remediation activities.
The project builds on the Feld Food Forest project and is promoted by its community.
Finally, WOWNature, that was selected in the ACTION first open call, recently resumed its activities after a stop imposed by the Covid-19 situation.
The pilot is assessing the role trees play in improving air quality by capturing PM; the pilot is active in the Po Valley (in Northern Italy), one of the areas with the worst air qualities in Europe. Volunteers will use Wiseair’s air quality sensors for gathering data in forests run by citizens’ groups and organizations. The pilot is led by Etifor, a consultancy spin-off of the University of Padova specialising in ecosystems services.