Access to accurate and trusted data for transboundary water management is important but not always sufficiently appreciated. Based on the Lake Victoria water levels decline, this technical note demonstrates that when a water crisis unfolds, tensions can arise because of absence of relevant data and uncertainty over data that are available. These may hamper the process towards agreeing on actions to be taken, thus delaying crisis resolution. This technical note demonstrates the importance of reliable data in a sensitive transboundary water situation. Countries therefore should allocate sufficient resources for adequately monitoring the state of transboundary water resources within their territories.

Community-based monitoring of water and environmental resources is believed to have the potential to help produce more or better water and environmental data, increase public participation in environmental monitoring, respond to issues of common community concern and enhance informed, democratic and transparent environmental decision making. Despite these perceived outcomes, initial and long term engagement of different stakeholders with community-based monitoring activities remains a challenge. Successful establishment of these initiatives has proven to be complex and there is little evidence that community-based monitoring projects have an impact on environmental or water resources management processes, or a legacy beyond their funding period. Whereas much attention is being paid to promoting community-based monitoring as a tool for producing more or better water or environment-related data, there is little conceptual understanding of how to critically analyze and understand the features and functioning of these initiatives. Therefore we do not know whether, or to what extent, these initiatives deliver on their perceived potentials. Thus, it is essential to learn from past experiences and critically document, analyze and understand factors that might influence the establishment, functioning and outcomes of community-based monitoring initiatives. Based on the review of a large body of literature in the fields of community-based monitoring, Citizen Science and affiliated fields of research, combined with the empirical evidence from a number of major EU-funded community-based monitoring projects, this paper introduces a framework that can be utilized to analyze the dynamics underlying the establishment and functioning of community-based monitoring initiatives. The distinction between five different dimensions, consisting of 22 internal and context-related factors, is a unique feature of this framework that broadens its applicability and makes it suitable for ‘Context analysis’, ‘Process evaluation’ and ‘Impact assessment’ of the initiatives. The introduced framework is therefore called the CPI framework in short.

Much attention is being paid to the design and implementation of community-based monitoring initiatives of water and environment, and how to attract more citizens to participate in such initiatives. Although mass participation in collecting and sharing water-related or environmental data and good project design and implementation are key factors for the success of community-based monitoring, these initiatives do not operate in a void. Community-based monitoring initiatives are embedded in, and can influence, existing social, institutional, political and technological settings. In spite of the fact that these contextual factors are not static and constantly change over time, capturing their status quo at the initiation of a community-based monitoring activity delivers critical insights for establishing a sustainable initiative and can be used as a benchmark for assessing its subsequent outcomes and impacts. Yet, the salience of understanding the initial contextual settings is often underestimated, or these are only considered once an initiative has already been established. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of early stage research about such contextual realities. In order to do so, we employed the CPI Framework (Gharesifard et al., 2019) for conducting a systematic analysis of the baseline situation of two newly established community-based monitoring initiatives, one in the Netherlands and one in Kenya. The case study in the Netherlands focuses on the issue of pluvial flooding in an urban setting, while the Kenyan case study deals with balancing sustainable livelihoods and biodiversity management in a rural area. Our baseline analysis showed that aside from the fact that these initiatives have different thematic foci, there are distinct differences between the two in terms of access to technology, availability and accessibility of data, the institutional arrangements for public participation in decision making processes, and the level of citizen trust in the authorities in charge of managing the respective water-related and environmental issues. Based on the findings of this research, a number of recommendations are provided that can be beneficial for the future development and functioning of the two initiatives.

To improve hydrological predictions, real-time measurements derived from traditional physical sensors are integrated within mathematic models. Recently, traditional sensors are being complemented with crowdsourced data (social sensors). Although measurements from social sensors can be low cost and more spatially distributed, other factors like spatial variability of citizen involvement, decreasing involvement over time, variable observations accuracy and feasibility for model assimilation play an important role in accurate flood predictions. Only a few studies have investigated the benefit of assimilating uncertain crowdsourced data in hydrological and hydraulic models. In this study, we investigate the usefulness of assimilating crowdsourced observations from a heterogeneous network of static physical, static social and dynamic social sensors. We assess improvements in the model prediction performance for different spatial-temporal scenarios of citizen involvement levels. To that end, we simulate an extreme flood event that occurred in the Bacchiglione catchment (Italy) in May 2013 using a semi-distributed hydrological model with the station at Ponte degli Angeli (Vicenza) as the prediction-validation point. A conceptual hydrological model is implemented by the Alto Adriatico Water Authority and it is used to estimate runoff from the different sub-catchments, while a hydraulic model is implemented to propagate the flow along the river reach. In both models, a Kalman filter is implemented to assimilate the crowdsourced observations. Synthetic crowdsourced observations are generated for either static social or dynamic social sensors because these measures were not available at the time of the study. We consider two sets of experiments: (i) assuming random probability of receiving crowdsourced observations and (ii) using theoretical scenarios of citizen motivations, and consequent involvement levels, based on population distribution. The results demonstrate the usefulness of integrating crowdsourced observations. First, the assimilation of crowdsourced observations located at upstream points of the Bacchiglione catchment ensure high model performance for high lead-time values, whereas observations at the outlet of the catchments provide good results for short lead times. Second, biased and inaccurate crowdsourced observations can significantly affect model results. Third, the theoretical scenario of citizens motivated by their feeling of belonging to a "community of friends" has the best effect in the model performance. However, flood prediction only improved when such small communities are located in the upstream portion of the Bacchiglione catchment. Finally, decreasing involvement over time leads to a reduction in model performance and consequently inaccurate flood forecasts.

The lack of access to basic sanitation is a global concern and alarmingly prevalent in low- and middle- income countries. In the densely populated settlements of these countries, on-site sanitation systems are usually the only feasible option because dwellers there have no sewers in place to connect to. Using on-site sanitation facilities results in an accumulation of faecal sludge which needs to be properly managed to ensure the well-being of the users as well as the surrounding environment. Unfortunately, often the conditions for faecal sludge management (FSM) within dense settlements are adverse and thus hamper sustainable FSM. We use the normative framework of the FSM enabling environment to gather empirical evidence from densely populated settlements of Kigali city in Rwanda to examine current FSM practices and the extent to which these are being influenced and affected by the setting within which they are taking place. The analysis of the study findings confirms that the existing conditions for FSM in these settlements are inadequate. The specific constraints that hinder the achievement of sustainable FSM include limited government focus on the sanitation sector, high turnover of staff in relevant government institutions, pit sludge management is not placed on the sanitation projects agenda, the existing relevant bylaws are not pro-poor oriented, a lack of clear responsibilities, a lack of relevant local professional training opportunities, unaffordability of FSM services and an inhibition to discuss FSM. Drawing on the involved stakeholders’ own perceptions and suggestions, we identify possible approaches to overcome the identified constraints and to allow all actors in the FSM chain to contribute effectively to the management of faecal sludge in densely populated low-income urban settlements. Finally, our study also presents a contribution to the theoretical conceptualisation of the enabling environment for sustainable FSM.

Crowd-sourced environmental observations are increasingly being considered as having the potential to enhance the spatial and temporal resolution of current data streams from terrestrial and areal sensors. The rapid diffusion of ICTs during the past decades has facilitated the process of data collection and sharing by the general public and has resulted in the formation of various online environmental citizen observatory networks. Online amateur weather networks are a particular example of such ICT-mediated observatories that are rooted in one of the oldest and most widely practiced citizen science activities, namely amateur weather observation. The objective of this paper is to introduce a conceptual framework that enables a systematic review of the features and functioning of these expanding networks. This is done by considering distinct dimensions, namely the geographic scope and types of participants, the network's establishment mechanism, revenue stream(s), existing communication paradigm, efforts required by data sharers, support offered by platform providers, and issues such as data accessibility, availability and quality. An in-depth understanding of these dimensions helps to analyze various dynamics such as interactions between different stakeholders, motivations to run the networks, and their sustainability. This framework is then utilized to perform a critical review of six existing online amateur weather networks based on publicly available data. The main findings of this analysis suggest that: (1) there are several key stakeholders such as emergency services and local authorities that are not (yet) engaged in these networks; (2) the revenue stream(s) of online amateur weather networks is one of the least discussed but arguably most important dimensions that is crucial for the sustainability of these networks; and (3) all of the networks included in this study have one or more explicit modes of bi-directional communication, however, this is limited to feedback mechanisms that are mainly designed to educate the data sharers.

Despite the considerable progress in engineering works, flooding continues and is now recognized as a major and increasing challenge. This realisation has resulted in a shift in flood risk management from leaning heavily on structural measures to the incorporation of non-structural initiatives, such as communication about flood risks that is considerate of the diversity existing within communities and that encompasses the entire disaster cycle. Communities that are more aware of flood risks and possess the knowledge to prepare for disasters appear to be better able to respond, mitigate and recover from their detrimental impacts. This paper examines the current practice of flood risk communication strategies of a local community in Doncaster, UK. The research findings are analysed with a view to identifying factors that positively and negatively influence the flood risk communication strategies and community resilience. Based on these insights, we provide recommendations for further improving the communication about flood risks, and ways in which it could be better targeted and used throughout the disaster cycle to help strengthen community resilience.