Blog

Here you can find inspiring citizen science stories of other researchers and their experiences, tips and tricks. Additionally, we share stories and updates about the citizen science (research) field.

Citizen Science in Action – Climate Adaptation in NL

Digital tools foster citizen engagement on urban climate action

Storytelling can make a better world

Challenges of collecting raindrops and data in Africa

Africa will be hit hard by climate change. Many adaptation measures, such as crop insurance, flood early warnings, and reservoir management, depend on dense networks of weather observations. Over the past ten years, the Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO) has been building a network of in situ weather observations, of which most are hosted by secondary schools.

Academic change is necessary to fully reap the benefits of citizen science

‘Does the academic system actually allow young researchers to do co-production research?’ That was the central question PhD Boram Kim posed during a Citizen Science lunch at TU Delft. As an expert in the field of citizen science, she observes several barriers conducting participatory research.
[Translate to English:]

Solving a riddle with the community

Aircraft tell air traffic controllers and observers on the ground information about their position, speed, etc, thus allowing them to be tracked. Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) and Mode S are two types of radar systems that allow air traffic control to receive this information and monitor aircraft’s movements and positions. Hence, ADS-B and Mode S signals are incredibly valuable sources of information for those studying air traffic management and aircraft performance modelling. In his new book “The 1090 Megahertz Riddle: A Guide to Decoding Mode S and ADS-B Signals”, Junzi Sun, Assistant Professor at the Department of Control and Simulation, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, offers a practical guide for researchers and engineers to unlock these open aircraft surveillance data.
[Translate to English:] City on the coast in the dark

Enabling the Continual Transformation of Coastal Dynamics Education

Approximately half the world’s population lives and works within a couple of hundred kilometres of a coastline – there is a thirst for coastal dynamics knowledge at every shore. This is why, since its publication in February this year, the open textbook “Coastal Dynamics” by Dr. Judith Bosboom, senior lecturer Coastal Engineering at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, and Prof. Marcel Stive, Emeritus Professor of Coastal Engineering, has now been downloaded almost 4000 times in more than 36 countries.
[Translate to English:] Green roofs on buildings

Urban Microclimate Modelling with SPACERGY

Daniela Maiullari is a PhD student in the Department of Urbanism in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at Delft University of Technology. By focusing on the relationship between urban form, urban microclimate, and the energy demand of buildings, her doctoral research addresses the transition towards low-carbon cities in future climate warming scenarios, and the increased need for space cooling.
[Translate to English:] Rounds of fresh cheese draining

Making the most out of whey with open knowledge & peer review

Milk and cheese play major roles in many diets all around the world. Yet, few are aware of the problems brought about by cheese whey – a massive by-product from dairy processing. “Here in Brazil, I came across so many difficulties in finding information about how much whey was produced, and what was done with it,” said Maria Paula Giulianetti de Almeida, PhD candidate with Gustavo Mockaitis in the Interdisciplinary Group for Agricultural and Environmental Biotechnology at the University of Campinas Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and CAPES visiting doctoral researcher in the Weissbrodt Group for Environmental Life Science Engineering at the TU Delft Department of Biotechnology, “so I decided to dig deeper into this.”
[Translate to English:] person writing on glass

Python Essentials for GIS Learners: A Targeted FAIR Research Workshop by TU Delft’s Digital Competence Centre

Are you interested in learning to program with Python? Are you currently working with data using geographic information systems (GIS) or interested in doing so? Would you like to apply computational thinking and data analysis tools to your research?
These were questions posed to members of the Historical GIS (HGIS) and Delft Digital Humanities (DDH) communities within the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment to invite their participation in the ‘Python Essentials for GIS Learners’ workshop. The workshop was coordinated by the TU Delft Digital Competence Centre (DCC) from 15th to 17th March.