We are excited to announce the next milestone in the ScienceUs Upscale Academy — the launch of the Flourish phase! After a competitive selection process, five exceptional projects have been chosen to continue their upscaling journey, bringing citizen science into action for climate resilience and community empowerment.
ScienceUs is an EU-funded initiative that supports grassroots climate actions grounded in citizen science. Through the Upscale Academy, we help local initiatives scale their impact by offering mentoring, peer learning, and expert support. After the successful completion of the Seed phase, these five projects stood out for their innovation, feasibility, and potential for transformative impact.
🌱 Meet the Projects Entering the Flourish Phase:
Blue-Green Tops: Adapting Building Roofs for Climate Resilience
This project harnesses the power of Citizen Science (CS) to capture data necessary to accelerate roof transformation using the Colouring Cities Research Programme (CCRP, https://colouringcities.org/) open platform code and infrastructure to enable standardised microspatial data on roofs and buildings to be crowdsourced, visualised, and shared. Dense urban areas like in Athens and Istanbul facing severe heat threats, offer prime opportunity for climate adaption and act as the starting point for blue-green transformation. This transformation is only achievable with active citizen and local stakeholder involvement, as their awareness and participation are crucial. Through citizen science, the project offers actionable, science-based solutions for enhancing climate resilience and presents a scalable, global model for the transformation of urban rooftops.
Aqua Sorgente
Focusing on the connection between water, people, and ecosystems, Aqua Sorgente empowers citizens to monitor and protect freshwater sources through hands-on science and community engagement.
The main objectives of the project are:
i) Implement and maintain a national database of spring monitoring data and analyze the data for hydrological research and water protection.
ii) Raise awareness about water resources and disseminate the scientific results.
Alleviating Energy Poverty in Vulnerable Households
This project addresses energy poverty as a key barrier to climate adaptation in vulnerable communities. Building on existing education and awareness programs, it leverages citizen science methodologies to empower households to monitor, understand, and optimize their energy consumption. Through a participatory approach, citizens gather data on energy usage and housing conditions using tools such as energy surveys, thermal sensors, and on-site visits. This data generates actionable indicators to identify challenges, inform targeted interventions, and promote energy-efficient solutions that mitigate climate risks like heatwaves and cold spells.
CoRe-ACTS – Coastal Resilience: Action Through Citizen Science
The CoRe-ACTS project monitors coastal erosion by employing Smart Pebbles – standard pebbles collected on the beach under study embedded with Radio Frequency identification (RFID) tags which can be detected by a hand-operated Reader. Prior to deployment, each Smart Pebble is 3D scanned and then precisely geolocated using an RTK-GPS. Citizen scientists periodically locate and recover the Smart Pebbles using the reader, re-acquiring their position and 3D model.
The Future is Climate
The Future is Climate (FIC) is a citizen participation initiative focused on understanding the main obstacles holding back climate action in Spain, in order to grapple with the complexity of the matter and find common ground by bringing out society’s collective intelligence. A citizen participation initiative focused on understanding the main obstacles holding back climate action in Spain, in order to grapple with the complexity of the matter and find common ground by bringing out society’s collective intelligence.
What Happens Next?
The Flourish phase offers tailored support to help each project refine and implement its upscaling strategy. Through coaching, peer exchange, and hands-on experimentation, the selected initiatives will build on their early successes and move closer to creating lasting, systemic change.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to the independent evaluators, mentors, and everyone in the ScienceUs community who helped make this process possible. Your expertise and commitment to collaborative climate solutions are what make this movement thrive.
Stay tuned as we follow these five projects on their journey to scale up and flourish!
“Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.”