Supporting Citizen Science Project 

The Environment Agency works with a range of local and national citizen science initiatives across England. The Supporting Citizen Science project, set up in 2022, has been working with partners to establish best practice and set out how the Environment Agency will be working with citizen science in the future.  

As citizen science initiatives on and around the water environment continue to expand and evolve, we want to be ready to work more effectively with these communities.  

Read our blog (External link)to find out more.  

Project outcomes

The Supporting Citizen Science project will enable us to learn from our past good intentions and good practice to develop a future organisational approach to support future citizen science initiatives in the water environment.   

The project is coordinated by a central national project team but delivered locally. Specialist citizen science leads have been recruited within Environment Agency operational Areas.  Citizen science leads are working closely with internal teams, local partners, and community groups across Environment Agency operational Areas. Feedback from each Environment Agency Area will help us to understand how the organisation as a whole is currently working with citizen science projects.  

Working together

The Environment Agency is working with partners to develop tools, guidance and  frameworks to support a standardised and connected approach to citizen science monitoring of the water environment. This includes our role as an advisory partner of the OFWAT innovation funded Catchment Systems Thinking Co-operative (CaSTCo).  

The partnership is led by United Utilities Plc and The Rivers Trust involving over 20 different water companies, NGOs and academic partners which aims to provide a national framework to standardize water monitoring citizen science. You can find out more by watching the video below.