Ongoing projects
SIENA IN TRANSITION (2023 – 2025)
In line with the recommendations of the Council of the European Union concerning the enhancement “of methods and techniques of data collection aimed at monitoring the processes of equitable, green and digital transitions”, the “Siena in Transition” (SiT) project intends to give life to an experimentation that will use Citizen Science to facilitate and strengthen the social integration of the local community – with particular attention to the students of the University of Siena – in the processes of sustainable and digital transition (twin green & digital transition) at the urban scale. The project will give life to permanent laboratories of active and conscious participation engaged in activities of collection, analysis and dissemination of data concerning sustainability in line with the Agenda 2030 SDGs. The thematic areas of Citizen Science research-action will be defined through a process of co-design by means of working tables to which students, members of the local community, public administration and other stakeholders are invited to participate. The project is supported and financed by the University of Siena – Piano per lo Sviluppo della Ricerca, F-NEW FRONTIERS 2023.
The output of Citizen Science experiments conducted in 2024 with international students at Siena University are available HERE. More results, rep will be published in 2025.
CITIZEN SCIENCE FOR SIENA (2023 – 2024)
The CS4Siena project aims to foster social integration while promoting the health and well-being of the population and the principles of environmental sustainability. Through Citizen Science, permanent laboratories of active and conscious participation engaged in data collection, analysis and dissemination activities regarding sustainability in line with the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals will be created. The specific thematic areas of Citizen Science research-action will be defined through a process of co-design and working tables in which students from the University of Siena (with particular attention to foreigners and/or non-residents), members of the local community, representatives of the Community Hub, the project’s sponsoring entities and the local PA will be invited to participate. Special attention will be paid to data and information surveys regarding health and well-being, urban accessibility and quality, and biodiversity. The project is developed in collaboration with Fondazione Musei Senesi (https://www.museisenesi.org/) and Accademia dei Fisiocritici (https://www.fisiocritici.it/), and is supported and financed by the Community Hub Culture Ibride (https://cultureibridecommunityhub.it/ – Vie d’Uscita Culturali), a project of the Monte dei Paschi di Siena Foundation supported by the University of Siena.
CITIZEN SCIENCE FOR RIVERS (2022 – 2025)
The CS4RIVERS citizen science project is conducted by the University of Siena within the National Biodiversity Future Centre, a project financed by the PNRR to monitor, preserve and restore biodiversity in order to counteract the anthropic impact, limit the effects of climate change and support ecosystem services in a sustainable manner. Specifically, the CS4RIVERS citizen science project aims to set up the Observatory of the fluvial biodiversity of the Ombrone river through the involvement of local communities and stakeholders in activities to monitor and protect the biodiversity of the Ombrone river. The participants in the project are involved in training activities, data collection and analysis, definition of policies and strategies for the conservation and protection of the Ombrone river biodiversity. http://www.cs4rivers.unisi.it/ If interested in participating contact cs4nbfc@unisi.it
SHORT-TERM CITY: DIGITAL PLATFORMS AND SPATIAL JUSTICE (2017 – 2024)
Digital platforms are changing cities in many subtle and profound ways. The short-term rentals website Airbnb is just one prominent example of how new online intermediaries reshape urban practices and imaginaries, change social relationships, disrupt traditional markets, amplify spatial hierarchies and inequalities, and challenge existing regulations and policies. Our goal is to offer an empirically-situated understanding of the logics and (bio-)politics of platform capitalism and how to deal with it, with a particular focus on Italian cities and on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. https://www.stcity.it
Past projects
EU COST – ENERGIC: European Network Exploring Research into Geospatial Information Crowdsourcing: Software and methodologies for harnessing geographic information from the crowd (2012 – 2016)
The action is based on the study of the remarkable new source of geographic information that has become available in the form of user-generated content accessible over the Internet. People now consume and produce geographic information on the go via platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram and others. The availability of cheap GPS allows everyone to survey and map and contribute to projects like Wikimapia and OpenStreetMap. The exploitation, integration and application of these sources, termed crowdsourced or user-generated information, offer to multidisciplinary scientists an unprecedented opportunity to conduct research on a variety of topics at multiple scales.
POLLI BRIGHT (2018 – 2020)
Il progetto “Polli:Bright” coordinato dal DISPOC per la Bright Night (la notte dei ricercatori) del 28 settembre 2018 è stato dedicato ad una survey sugli insetti impollinatori. Il progetto ha poi dato l’inizio ad una collaborazione con Imperial College (Londra) e la National Geographic Society ccordinata da Andrea Sforzi, Direttore del Museo Naturale della Maremma
PROGETTO CESVOT “CONVERSI” (2019 – 2020)
Il progetto ha sviluppato una serie di attività di tipo partecipativo, per la valorizzazione al fine di innescare unprocesso di ridefinizione e riqualificazione della valle la cui fruibilità potrà andare a beneficio sia della mobilità intra-urbana, sia della valorizzazione e manutenzione del patrimonio artistico culturale senese, qui inteso come bene comune rappresentato dalla valle stessa e dalla cinta muraria che la delimita.
La valorizzazione della valle è considerarsi anche come contributo alla mobilità dolce per la popolazione studentesca, residenti e turisti.
https://www.culturing.info/project/mappatura-delle-risorse-culturali-allinterno-del-progetto-conversi/
I COMUNI ITALIANI SU TWITTER (2015 – 2018)
The aim of this project carried out with the collaboration of Twitter Italia has been to address changes in public communication following the advent of Internet social networking tools and the emerging web 2.0 technologies which are providing new ways for information sharing and knowledge. In particular public administrations are called uponto reinvent the governance of public affairs and to update the means for interacting with their communities The project has developed an analysis of the distribution, diffusion and performance of the official profiles on Twitter adopted by the Italian municipalities (comuni), which are the country’s smallest administrative units, up to November 2013 and the updated in 2015. It identified the drivers of the diffusion of Twitter profiles, the patterns of the spatial distribution and the performance of the profiles through an aggregated index, called the Twiperindex, which evaluates the the profiles’activity with reference to the gravitational areas of the municipalities. The assumption is that the diffusion and the performance of social media tools, such as Twitter, in public administration largely depend on the innovative attitude of the administration and on strongly bounded and socially connected communities.
TEA – TOURIST EXPERIENCE APPLICATION (2013 – 2014)
TEA is a web-based application that creates custom journey based on the preferences of the tourist. The information used by TEA was built through crowdsourcing information.
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OVERSHOOT: A GUIDE TO SUSTAINABILITY (2013)
OVERSHOOT: A GUIDE TO SUSTAINABILITY is one of the outcomes of the activities of the NESSO network – the Sustainable Siena Network – which is based at Siena University. The aim of the initiative is to encourage environmental knowledge and understanding at the local level through links with the local area, and at the international level through relationships with research programmes and the activities of academics from Siena University. The purpose of this Guide is to provide a tool for a basic level of education about the ecological, economic and social aspects of sustainability. It aims to provide the core knowledge needed to understand the principles, ideas and tools for thinking about sustainability in order to encourage local and regional communities to adopt behaviours that are economically and environmentally more beneficial and proactive.