Citizen science to raise awareness of daylight’s impact on health and wellbeing

DLA Annual Conference 2025
Parallel session F

Friday, 23 May 2025
from 10:30 to 12:30

Lead

Dr Marijke Gordjin, University of Groningen & Chrono@Work, The Netherlands
Dr. Oliver Stefani, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland

Description

Citizen science is any activity that involves the public in scientific research and thus has the potential to bring together science, policy makers, and society as a whole in an impactful way. The idea is that all people can participate in for instance data collection, data interpretation and analysis, and to publication and dissemination of results. At the same time, scientists disseminate knowledge on the topic to involve the public and to be able to obtain reliable data. (Citizen Science Europe https://eu-citizen.science/)

In the current project about (day)light, the idea is to inform the public about what (day)light is, how it is important for health, and what we mean with the right light at the right time. By collecting personal light exposure, light behaviour, and knowledge on time of day, season, and location, we will create a global map with an estimate of people’s light exposure across the day, the year and place on earth. It will be scientifically informative to see how many people are exposed to the right light at the right time.

Objectives

We will create small groups and have a brainstorm session to answer the objectives. At the end we will combine all ideas and try to define priorities and a to do list to come to a project proposal.

  • Finding an effective communication method based on Citizen Science.
  • What data do we want to be collected by Citizens?
  • What information do we want to share?
  • What do we need to set up a Citizen Science project (e.g. app developer, protected server, time, money, brain power, data scientist, translations).
  • How can we promote the project on a global scale?