Matchmaking & Collaboration Citizen science
CITIZENS HELP WITH SCIENCE
Text Rob van der Wal
Whether it’s testing water quality, test-driving autonomous vehicles or mapping plastic pollution: TU Delft regularly enlists the help of citizens in its research.
n 2017, volunteers – most of them children – took jars with them on holiday to test the natural local swimming water at their destination. It was all part of the TU Delft citizen science platform Waterlab, and its research on water quality in Europe. Participants carefully recorded the test site, odour and temperature of the water and returned the jars to the Netherlands for further laboratory research. The digital map for the project shows measurements from across Europe. When the general public is actively involved in scientific research, this is known as citizen science. Citizens work as amateur researchers, collecting data or serving as test subjects in experiments.
Researcher Maryna Öztürker in the TU Delft hEAT-lab test vehicle.
©Sam Rentmeester
‘The main challenge is finding the right people’
Children from the Sint Jozefschool in Schipluiden go fishing for plastic, helping to map plastic hotspots.
©Sam Rentmeester
‘We aim to gain a better understanding of where the macro- and microplastics are’
SPOT THE HOTSPOT
Five students from the Sint Jozefschool in Schipluiden took to the water in a boat last November. They took a fishing net, made of tights, an old soup can, tie-wraps, empty bottles and a mesh string bag. The aim was to fish pieces of plastic out of the water and collect the information for the Spot the Hotspot project. “It was fun making our own net”, says Skyler from year six. The children are in a special class for talented students. They spend several hours a week working on themes of their choice. Skyler’s classmate Noa suggested discarded waste as a topic, inspired by Plastic Soup-surfer Merijn Tinga, who makes surfboards out of plastic litter. The children got the recyclable bag for the net from the supermarket. “When the children asked the manager why there was so much plastic packaging in the store, he was lost for words”, says teacher Franca van den Nieuwendijk. The Waterlab and Delfland Water Authority have begun to process the results, says project manager Sandra de Vries. “Basically, we aim to gain a better understanding of where the macro- and microplastics are.” Within the Delfland Water Authority – stretching from Rotterdam to The Hague – there are around 20 macro-plastic hotspots, where there are a lot of larger pieces of plastic. De Vries aims to chart between 50 and 100 of them.
SELF-DRIVING CAR
Hoogendoorn-Lanser, director of the Mobility Innovation Centre Delft (MICD) and doctoral candidate Maryna Öztürker from the TU Delft hEAT-lab (where research is conducted on electric and automated transport) wanted to find out. As a result, some 100 people from Delft were able to take a ride in a test vehicle: a delivery van with a car seat in the back. Screens were fitted around the seat showing what is happening outside. Just like being in the driver’s seat, but with one important difference: you are not driving the car yourself. Participants took two 20-minute test journeys. The route ran from the campus across Delft, via a provincial road, past a shopping centre and through traffic lights. Why did the researchers not use a driving simulator? Hoogendoorn-Lanser: “You’re just sitting quietly in one place. In a car, you can feel everything: bends in the road, acceleration, braking. That’s the added value of this experiment.”
On the road, the participants were given a task. During the first journey, it was a work task on the laptop. On the second, participants could read something on their smartphone or a book. They were filmed by a camera with facial recognition and a smartwatch recorded their heart rate. But they were not told that the car was actually being driven by a driver: fully self-driving cars are not yet allowed on the public highway. To make the journey feel real, the driver kept his distance and exercised a lot of caution. For legal reasons, that is exactly what a self-driving car does, says Hoogendoorn-Lanser. The trick worked: three-quarters of participants thought that the car really was self-driving. In their ratings for safety, time saved and comfort, their responses were more positive afterwards than before the two journeys. The activity they were doing – work or relaxation – made little difference.
Reliable data
Sandra de Vries, project coordinator at Waterlab, sees citizen science as a great way of sparking people’s enthusiasm for science. “On the water quality project, we achieved a lot of results with little effort.” But there are also issues. De Vries points out that volunteers are not always familiar with the right testing methods. “They need to read the instructions in order to be able to produce reliable data.” This is why De Vries sometimes makes instructional vlogs. Professional researchers take readings at specific places in a structured way, whereas citizen science can be quite haphazard.
“So, for Spot the Hotspot (see box), we compiled a map indicating where a lot of plastic was likely to be and specifically asked people to look there”, says De Vries. In her view, the main challenge in citizen science is finding the right people. “You have to make time for it. If people are busy, they soon forget to do research, so we mainly approach clubs and associations. They can participate with a whole group on a set day.”
DELFT MEASURES RAIN
During the summer, the owners of around 90 rain gauges across Delft note down how much rain has been collected each morning. The results present a picture of the rainfall in the city – and how it differs. The meteorological institute KNMI also measures rainfall, says associate professor Marie-Claire ten Veldhuis, who is involved in the Delft Measures Rain project. “But their radar only measures on a large scale. That doesn’t give us a detailed picture of rainfall within the city.” In view of the heavier downpours and longer droughts caused by climate change, this knowledge can prove highly useful, says Ten Veldhuis. “We noticed that there’s slightly more precipitation in the north-west of Delft than elsewhere. If that’s an ongoing problem and municipality knows about it, it can increase the size of the drains or make the pumps work faster.” Initially, participants made their own rain gauges using empty soft drinks bottles, says Ten Veldhuis. But not everyone was making them in the same way. “Are the dimensions of the bottle right? Is the funnel straight? All of that can cause deviations.” So, Delft Measures Rain switched to simple factory-made rain gauges and issued automatic gauges. “They measure in the same way and at the same time. Now we can compare the data from the automatic and manual gauges.” The Parkrijk Montessori school in Rijswijk has an automatic rain gauge. The children found assembling it quite a challenge, as Kevin from year eight explains. “The kit was made up of lots of small components. They really look like each other.” The new measurements for Delft Measures Rain this summer will also record the groundwater level and evaporation from the gauges, resulting in an even better overview of the effects of rainfall in Delft.
Year eight from the Parkrijk Montessori school in Rijswijk assembled the automatic rain gauge themselves.©Sam Rentmeester