Report on the outcomes of the problem identification phase
Creators: name: Condotta, Massimiliano
name: Scanagatta, Chiara
name: Peron, Fabio
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2020
Subjects: co-creation
air pollution
Verona

description: <strong>The first loop problem identification phase</strong> of the Verona Looper Living Lab (LLL) took place between November 2017, when the project was officially presented to citizens, and October 2018, when the data visualisation activity was ended. After the official presentation of the project, which took place the 22<sup>nd</sup> of November 2017 with the alderman for the Environment of the Comune di Verona, the first loop activity of scoping of issues took place with three meetings which had a good number of participants. For the Verona LLL was quite clear that the main topic to discuss was air quality related issues, therefore researchers had to first work with participants to understand what they thought the meaning of “air quality” was. This led to a situation where, even if the topic was clear, an important work on the “perception” of air quality was done during the problem framing activity. This was necessary to define what was the exact definition of air quality, and how pollutants work. It was also necessary to explain to participants that to solve air quality related issues these need to be addressed by investigating and measuring other conditions such as noise pollution and quality of urban spaces. Because of this, it was necessary to prepare some lectures for the first meeting in order to give the right tools to participants to obtain the best results for the project. The first meeting for the scoping of issues was on 12<sup>th</sup> of December 2017, there were about 35 people participating, and it was possible to explain more in detail the purpose and goals of the project. During this first meeting, as abovementioned, it was possible to explain to the stakeholders how pollutants and sensors worked, and which phases the project would follow during the next years. The stakeholders of the Verona LLL were quite active during this first meeting and, as they wanted to skip to the design of mitigation solutions, it was necessary to direct them in order not to jump to a conclusion before gaining more data on the criticalities found during the scoping of issues. During the second meeting, which took place on 24<sup>th</sup> of January 2018, about 20 citizens participated and most of them already participated to the first meeting. This second meeting was useful to recap what happened during the first one, to sediment the knowledge gained on pollutants and sensors, and to start to decide where to position the available sensors. The sensors that the Verona LLL had for the co-monitoring of the first loop were: 2 mobile stations and 1 Skypost given by ARPAV, the National Environmental Control Agency; 64 passive sensors, 6 noise boxes, 2 AirBeam and the geotagging web app as low-cost sensors for the participatory sensing. During the second meeting the positioning of the 2 ARPAV mobile stations and of the ARPAV Skypost was chosen, and it was also decided how to handle the big amount of passive sensors at participants’ disposal. Participants decided to do a double period (each of two weeks) of monitoring with the passive sensors for each chosen spot. The third, and last, meeting for the scoping of issues was held on 7<sup>th</sup> of February 2018. This meeting took place in a more peripheric area of the city, and this meant that out of 20 citizens present at the LLL workshop, only half of them already came to previous meetings and it was necessary to explain again something about the work to be done in the frame of the project. During this meeting the last details about the timing of the co-monitoring for the ARPAV mobile stations and Skypost was decided (continuous monitoring for a 40 day period) and some more participants adhesion to have a noise box in their houses were collected. As most of the people participating in this workshop were from this suburban area of Cadidavid, they asked to expand the project area to include their neighbourhood, and some passive sensors were placed around here as well. After the meetings on the scoping of issues, the first loop data collection activity took place between the end of February 2018 and mid-April 2018. As per request of participants the data collection was officially concluded after the Vinitaly exhibition, which is one of the main traffic magnets in Verona. During the participatory data collection the sensors provided by ARPAV remained in the same place collecting data continuously, some passive sensors were positioned - and collected back - by Legambiente Verona, and noise boxes were positioned by the University Iuav of Venice - and collected back by Legambiente Verona. The tools for the participatory sensing, on the other hand, were used by participants since December 2017 (2 AirBeam) and January 2018 (first 2 noise boxes out of the 6 produced in the end), and for the AirBeam usage they were still collecting data in November 2018. The 12<sup>th</sup> of July 2018 the alderman of the Environment of the Comune d Verona officially presented the data visualisation platform during a press conference, this was considered to be the official start for the visualisation of data activity which ended the 5<sup>th</sup> of October 2018, when data were visualised with citizens during a face-to-face meeting which gave the start to the co-design phase. <strong>The second loop problem identification phase</strong> was then supposed to start in July 2019, but it did not take place as per the first loop one. This was due to the willingness of participants to continue with the work done until that point, in order to further improve the solutions implemented thanks to the first loop. This decision taken from the Verona LLL resulted in the skipping of the scoping activity for the second loop, and in the merging of the monitoring activity from the first loop with the data collection activity from the second loop. Further results, and analysis, for the second loop is to be found in deliverable D6.3b.