Environmental problems should not be tackled by scientists or policy makers alone. Involving the general public in observing and understanding our changing world, and encouraging citizen stewardship for the (marine) environment are crucial elements for a sustainable way of facing current and future problems. The EC-funded project Citclops will start in October 2012 and is focused on retrieving, through crowdsourcing, data on three main optical properties related to sea-water quality: colour, transparency and fluorescence. Novel technologies will be developed to retrieve these properties based on citizens’ measurements with common mobile devices. Concerning water colour, smart-phone camera images, taken through citizens’ collaboration, will be used to calculate the Forel-Ule index for the water body, providing an indication of gross biological activity. Water-transparency is planned to be measured by three alternative sensor systems : i) smart-phone cameras; ii) low-cost moored instrumentation; and iii) underwater, wearable cameras with added low-cost sensing systems (quasi-digital sensors). Obtained ocean colour and transparency data will complement the longterm global data series which go back to the late 20th century. Finally, to assess the fluorescence of different water constituents, low-cost sensors and light-sources will be customized and connected to smart-phones and other mobile devices. All acquired data is automatically uploaded through a specific service or application (such as Google+ Instant Upload), archived remotely and processed, and resulting information is accessed through a webpage or a mobile application by end users, thus closing the loop to citizens and policy makers

Ocean Optics XXI, 8-12 October 2012, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom

Peer reviewed