Ground Truth 2.0 Newsletter #2 available now!
What have the partners of Ground Truth 2.0 been up to for the past months? Read about it in our latest newsletter! Below, Project Director Uta Wehn already gives a preview of what has happened in the project lately. For the complete newsletter, click here.
Dear reader,
We had a productive year in 2017 and gladly look back on the many co-design sessions we held in the four European and the two African countries with local stakeholders where the Ground Truth 2.0 Demo Cases are located. All with the aim of helping them design their citizen observatory (CO) focused on their local needs.
We are proud to be able to report that the respective co-design groups in the six Ground Truth 2.0 Demo Cases have by now identified the central challenges they are addressing, the specific objectives for their COs and – not least – they have generated identities for their respective COs:
2017 also saw the launch of the first Ground Truth 2.0 citizen observatories: Meet Mee Mechelen (in Belgium) focuses on environmental quality of life in the city of Mechelen and involves citizens in monitoring their local air quality and noise. RitmeNatura.cat (in Spain) aims to create collective knowledge about the local impact of climate change on nature and its rhythms in Catalonia, in order to contribute to better adaptation policies.
Another highlight of 2017 was the inclusion of Ground Truth 2.0 as a testimonial of citizen observatories in the European Commission’s official statement at the plenary meeting of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) in Washington D.C.; this in addition to our active involvement at the plenary – you can read more about this in this issue. Other items in this newsletter cover the relations of Ground Truth 2.0 with the new European project WeObserve and the dissemination actions and meetings held this autumn.
We’re looking forward to 2018 as the year in which we aim to upscale the six Ground Truth 2.0 citizen observatories. What are your plans and ambitions? And how do they relate to citizen observatories? We would like to hear from you!
On behalf of the whole Ground Truth 2.0 team, I wish you a successful and inspiring new year!
Kind regards,
Uta Wehn
Ground Truth 2.0 Project Director