Sensing the risk

‘Citizen sensing’, framed as grassroots-driven monitoring initiatives based on sensor technology, is increasingly entering the debate on environmental risk governance. When lay people distrust official information or just want to fill data gaps, they may resort to sensors and data infrastructures to visualize, monitor and report risks caused by environmental factors to public health. Although through a possible initial conflict, citizen sensing may ultimately have the potential to contribute to institutional risk governance. The practice brings the promise to make risk governance more transparent and accountable. Whereas studies on broader citizen science and on citizen sensing often focus on the learning gains for the participants, this research rather explores the potential for the sensing citizens to concretely influence risk governance and complement it by means of integration. Building on previous empirical research based on a combination of methods, including ethnographical research, descriptive analysis and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (Berti Suman 2021, “The policy uptake of citizen sensing”, Edward Elgar), this contribution offers an accessible ‘toolbox’ for interested communities, policy-makers and researchers that wish to shape citizen sensing initiatives in a way to contribute to risk governance. The identification of a ‘dilemma of integration’ deriving from the incompatibility of integration with strongly community-led projects will serve as a warning on the complexity of this process.