SIMILE – Citizen science for active participation in lake monitoring

Cross-platform mobile application for environmental monitoring developed together with the bodies currently responsible of the receipt of environmental notifications (ARPA Lombardia, Environmental Department of Canton Ticino) and through the consultation with environmental associations (Legambiente).

Simplified web interface to access the data collected by the staff of the environmental agencies, enabling the creation of reports.

Implementation of a reporting service integrated to the existing, allowing the operators a better evaluation of the phenomena in progress reducing the need of field trip, reducing the loss of information among various bodies, and encouraging the public to report the presence of unwanted phenomena by simplifying the current protocol and reducing the needed time.

Application downloaded more than 500 times in less than 2 months; 75 voluntary observations received, some of which accompanied by temperature measurements; repeated signaling (about 10 times) of the same phenomenon (discharging in the lake with vapors) during the summer period and subsequent forwarding of the images and of the content to ARPA, which was not aware of the situation.

It is likely that the number of quality of water parameters measurements can increase, with a consequent increase in the use of the products of the satellite images monitoring for the validation. The COVID-19 emergency prevented from carrying out field activities, especially with the schools, and consequently the collection of measures. The situation of uncertainty today is such that asking to bodies already undergoing extraordinary workloads to devote extra time to voluntary initiatives is quite difficult.