Analysing the Regione hydrography databases, we note 59 different types (river, creek, stream etc.). There is an interesting pattern showing in relation to fosso (creek), for which different names are used south of Pisa (botro, in green) and in the Florence/Siena area (borro, in red) . For more details: info@pibinko.org.
With the pibinko.org network, since 2009 we have been preparing annual reports, which are normally published by January, covering the previous year.
We then issue periodic updates (as a minimum monthly, often weekly for our Italian audience). These include news, reports on events, and other ideas.
Exceptionally we need a mid-year status report. This happened in 2011, and 2019 looks definitely like another year where this can help. We also included some outlook through the rest of 2019.
The report comes in two pages, and you may download it from this link.
For those interested in previous episodes of the story, here you find our 2018 summary.. and the pibinko.org and jugbandcm.it sites have the full picture.
Inquiries and booking: info@pibinko.org
Between June 27 and July 1, 2019, I had the opportunity of attending with the BuioMetria Partecipativa project a part of the fourth “Light Pollution Theory, Modelling, and Measurements” and a workshop connected to the conference. Here you will find a brief summary of the event and the experimental activities related to it, and some highlights (or should I say “high lights”) from the trip from Toscana to Hungary.
Also, please note your next opportunities to interact with BuioMetria Partecipativa and interdisciplinary night promotion and protection: July 16 in Milano, for an outreach event with Wim Schmidt, one of the main Dutch experts on this topic, and from July 25 to 29 in Southern Tuscany, with a visit by prof. Zoltán Kolláth, the mastermind of all the Hungarian events portrayed below, as well as a great progressive rock fan.
Now, back to the LPTMM conference (from June 25 to June 28). This is a bi-annual meeting attracting the main world experts in the field. After the main event, an experimental workshop was scheduled, inviting researchers to conduct night sky quality measurements with different techniques, spanning from the dear, old, Sky Quality Meter (which we called buiometro in Italy), to a plethora of imaging systems complemented by rather sophisticated processing workflows.
Such developments in sensing techniques also reflect the maturity on the light pollution monitoring topic. In the Nineties the focus of the experts was in the mitigation of light pollution effects in relation to night sky observation, as a priority mainly deriving from astronomers in order to reduce the amount of light improperly directed upwards. In the following years, with a greater awareness of the negative effects of the blue component of night lights, and its impact on ecology and landscape, measurement systems have evolved in order to detect such information. Essentially state-of-the-art technology requires the acquisition of “all sky” images, allowing to assess the source direction of lights, as well as spectral data. Combining such information, and integrating it with remote sensing data, as well as drone-derived information, extremely detailed scenarios can be assessed, thus supporting policies and management strategies for lighting systems.
The conference was in the Zselic dark sky park, in the South-West of Hungary. This is one of the three dark-sky areas certified by the International Dark Sky Association, and catered like babies by Zoltán Kolláth: in addition to managing the certification process, in the years the professor has fostered a series of lighting renovation projects in the villages around the “night sky reserves”, developed a structured research, and promotion activities on night sky-related issues.
A photo report of the “buiometric” mission and the LPTMM workshop (June 28/July 1 2019)
We thank the conference organizers for their hospitality, and grant EFOP- 3.6.2-16- 2017-00014, “Development of international research environment for light pollution studies” for support to this mission. For more information: bmp@pibinko.org
In the header, a map showing the breakdown of different types of energy sources back in 1972. The original article (from the Panorama magazine, Nov. 1973) is part of the pibinko.org stuff-o-theque.
Apart from this, things are spinning quite fast, so I leave you with a reminder of events for the first part of the Summer, on the notes of a crazy live version of Crazy in Love.
June
25 – Follonica (GR) – talk by pibinko at the Meet Music national workshop (the workshop is also on June 26 and 27)
27-30 – Zselic, Hungary. BuioMetria Partecipativa at the Light Pollution Theory, Modelling, and Measurements conference.
July
13 Punta Ala (Tuscany), Jug Band dalle Colline Metallifere live @ Bar Polo
16 – Milano – Outreach on Light Pollution with Wim Schmidt (NL) and BuioMetria Partecipativa
20-21 Tirli, Palla eh! Tournament
24-30 BuioMetria Summer Campaign, guest starring Zoltan Kollath
27-28, Scalvaia, Palla a 21 Tournament
Header image: two globe luminaires silhouetted on the ancient walls of the village of Rab.
From June 14 to June 16 I was invited to give a presentation at the first Croatian conference on light pollution, in the stunning setting of the Rab Island, and namely in the area of Lopar. The event was triggered by the launch of a national law on light pollution, and the interest by various stakeholders to increase awareness on this topic. The invitation I had derived from various pre-existing contacts withing the BuioMetria Partecipativa project, the participation in 2013 to an international measurement campaign on the island of Lastovo, and other interconnections.
Concerning the talk on BuioMetria Partecipativa, I provided a summary of our experiences since 2008, and our point of view on some of the light pollution issues. Such viewpoint comes from the mediation of numerous contacts with a wide range of subjects active in different roles related to artificial light at night, and light pollution research, as well as an extensive track record of community engagement initiatives, including citizen science campaign, and outreach and education events.
Furthermore, in the presentation we proposed various potential lines of collaboration between Italy, Croatia, and other countries facing the Adriatic sea, also considering the fact that the effects of artificial lighting from Italy are in many cases well detectable from the Eastern coast of the Adriatic, as documented by measurement campaign which I was invited to attend in the past in the context of European projects.
With our presence at the Lopar conference (acknowledging the organizers for their hospitality), Buiometria Partecipativa, a small bottom-up project launched in 2008 in the Farma Valley, one of the lesser known parts of Tuscany, is maintaining its commitment to represent Italy in a European context, on a topic which many people consider a niche. A niche which, however, has every day less motivations to be neglected, given the increasing sensitivity to environmental issues, and the fact that even small actions count, and can be related to strategies on a much wider scale, and with an interdisciplinary approach (which the pibinko.org network is quite comfortable with, anyway)
More initiatives are taking shape summing up the BuioMetria Partecipativa team and the Metalliferous Hills Jug Band , and will be announced soon. The next scheduled “situation” will be Andrea Giacomelli the the third Meet Music, a national workshop on music production in Follonica, on June 25.
For more information: bmp@pibinko.org
Reaching Lopar from Southern Tuscany is a long trip. Given the interesting opportunity of the invitation for a short event, I decided to embed a “survey” campaign on the way, adopting the map(pear)ing approach. For this I needed some starting information, which materialized in the form of a book with the presentation of over 100 musicians from all over the Balkan area (and ranging East to Caucasus), and at some point a map of the country.
The stops were in Trieste (Trst), Rijeka (once Fiume) and Rab (once Arbe). For those of you receiving frequent emails with invitations to go to Croatia for dental care, I can confirm that there are a lot of facilities of this type, at least in the city. I considered that once this area was confronted by irredentists, and now, things evolved and we can find dentists. But let’s give the floor to some shots:
Last Wednesday, after close-of-business on a workshop for research ethics in the Internet sector, I had the possibility of organizing a brief yet intense presentation of the pibinko.org network at Piola Libry, in Brussels, Belgium.
This followed our participation in early April to the final conference of the DITOs project, and various on- and off-line meetings where the pibinko.org network, and especially its Metalliferous Hills Jug Band version, is active on the topic of participatory investigation and community engagement.
More in general, this event was part of our line of Spring situations, which you find gradually announced on pibinko.org/calendar, and then documented more in detail on http://www.pibinko.org/notizie
More or less from left to right:
Not in the picture:
It is interesting to note the evolution of the “catalog” from one event to the other (check out here what we presented in Florence at the end of February).
Putting together the map base and the thematic data, plus the personal background of the participants, we were able to draw an interesting picture, ranging from the definition of “Maremma” , to the role of Polish troops during the Monte Cassino operation, to ancient games and state-of-the-art environmental monitoring. We also had a surprise ending with some Sicilian flair.
For the musical part, in the absence of instruments, and not wanting to delve into body percussion, we showed some videos of the Jug Band dalle Colline Metallifere, also to promote the imminent tour to Milano and Germany.
Thanks to Piola Libri for hosting the event, and to Alberto B. for suggesting the location.
For more information: info@pibinko.org o 3317539228
On May 22 I was invited as an expert in Brussels for a workshop of the PANELFIT (Participatory Approaches to a New Ethical and Legal Framework for ICT) project.
Should it sound strange that a geomatic hydrologist and drummer is called to work in this type of setting, it may help recalling that since 2000 I have been dealing periodically with personal data protection issues, either by creating and managing user surveys, running citizen science campaigns, and so forth. Summing these experiences, the project team assessed that I could provide useful inputs to their work
Here are some points of interest deriving from the pibinko.org network, which were included in the notes from the working groups
A report with the recommendations of the work will be issued in the coming months.
I thank the PANELFIT project (HORIZON 2020, N. 788039) for this opportunity. For more information info@pibinko.org
Before we dive in the report, we would like to remind you that the next opportunity to experience all the stories explained below (except Belgian chocolates) will be on Saturday, April 13, in Tatti, Southern Tuscany, from 6PM to 8PM. Here we will be presenting the first version of the Tatti community map, as a part of the series of meetups with the pibinko.org network on Maremma map(pear)ing (see blog announcement). Now on we go, with Edoardo Bennato singing “a blues about trains..“
Between April 1 and April 4 I had the opportunity of representing the pibinko.org network in Brussels, Belgium, in two events related to citizen science and, more in general, to community engagement in scientific and research activities (or the engagement of scientists and researchers in community activities?).
This is a field in which I have been increasingly working since 2008 (we may mention as first steps things like the outreach video on free/open source geographic information with Tuscan hamlet residents acting, or the m(‘)appare Milano campaign), and which I started elaborating even earlier. In fact, since I was working at CRS4, in Sardinia (1997-2002). As an example, in 2000 I launched a survey about geographic information system skills in the island, obtaining over 120 replies and triggering on these various technology transfer actions toward the local communities.
On Tuesday, April 2, I was at the workshop of the “Empowerment, Inclusiveness, and Equity” working group of ECSA (European Citizen Science Association). Say what? This is a group, composed partly by researchers, and partly by practitioners, dealing in various forms with projects where experts on a given topic need to cooperate with folks who are “less expert”. The group works on identifying problems and solutions in order for these processes to be inclusive, equitable, and empowering.
In the workshop we elaborated further in some issues discussed a couple of months ago in Paris. I also had the opportunity of getting to know more experts, and to present the overall pibinko.org activities to the participants. I then proposed the Jug Band dalle Colline Metallifere (JBCM, or Metalliferous Hills Jug Band) as a “context” to facilitate empowerment, inclusiveness and equity in various projects, extending what we have been doing over the past year in Italy, and which we can further develop in the coming months with PORGEP2019.
The following day the audience grew, with the setup of a stand in the marketplace at the final event of the Do-it-together Science (DITOs) European project, in the stunning venue of the Brussels Natural Science Museum. For this event I prepared yet another installation of the pibinko.org network travelling micro-museum, I shared with a part of the circa 150 attendees the geomusical approach on which we are working with JBCM, and I played a couple of songs, with a guitar kindly provided by the museum (since I could not carry mine on the plane).
On both days the issues in the spotlight were related to the pibinko.org Spring series of events. Among these, a special focus was on the Brescia national conference on interdisciplinary protection and promotion of the night sky on May 16, and -two weeks later- the geomusical tour by the Metalliferous Hills Jug Band in Germany, via Politecnico di Milano, which you too can support.
For more information: info@pibinko.org or +393317539228
Si ringraziano il progetto DITOs e i responsabili del gruppo di lavoro “EIE” dell’ECSA per l’invito e per il supporto economico sulle spese di viaggio.
TO BE TRANSLATED
Nell’immagine in evidenza sopra, Mario Straccali, con valido supporto morale, completa la campitura artigianale dello scotch di carta usato per spiegare che se la bacheca su cui da un paio di anni spicca la mappa di comunita’ della Val di Farma (anche citata in un rapporto della Banca Mondiale) e’ vuota, c’e’ un motivo utile.
La mappa, con una copia stagionata da dieci mesi di esposizione agli elementi naturali, e’ stata infatti staccata per essere riesposta nel micromuseo della Val di Farma & friends che troverete tra venerdi’ 22 e domenica 24 febbraio presso l’Hotel Lombardi di Firenze (in particolare ci sara’ una visita guidata fra le 18 e le 20 di sabato 24).
Per ulteriori informazioni sulla manifestazione, potete leggere la presentazione dell’evento, scrivere a info@pibinko.org oppure chiamare il 3317539228
For more information: bmp@pibinko.org or +393317539228
On March 13, 2019, in the stunning set of the Osservatorio Ximeniano in Florence (the first astronomical observatory in the city, founded in 1756), a workshop was organized by the Institute of Biometeorology of the National Research Council, the Department of Biology from the University of Pisa, and the BuioMetria Partecipativa project from the pibinko.org network. The topic of the workshop was the definition of common operational perspectives on protection and promotion of night skies, following the international symposium held on the island of Capraia (Tuscany) in September, 2018 (a report on the symposium is available).
The workshop was primarily intended as a follow-up for attendees of the Capraia event, together with other subjects collaborating with the organizers, in order to further consolidate a national interdisciplinary working group active in monitoring, outreach and promotion of dark-sky areas. In addition to direct collaborators of the organizing institutions, the event saw the participation of Regional Enviromental Protection Agencies from Veneto, Piemonte, Emilia Romagna, and Liguria, plus other experts from Regione Emilia-Romagna.
Each participant had the possibility of giving a presentation in the first part of the workshop. Key talks were proposed by:
Andrea Giacomelli, MS in Environmental Engineering and PhD, animating since 2008 BuioMetria Partecipativa as the flagship project in a framework of various initiatives for protection and promotion of lesser known resources in the fields of culture, environment, and open innovation (supported by the pibinko.org network):
Luciano Massetti, MS in electronic engineering and senior technologist at CNR IBIMET, with a strong track record in environmental monitoring and education, active since 2014 on activities concerning artificial light at night:
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Andrea Bertolo, MS in Physics, managing the light pollution section of the Veneto Regional Environmental Protection Agency, presenting their regional network for night sky quality measurements, used both for monitoring and scientific research.
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Elena Maggi, MS in Biology, researcher with the Dept. of Biology at the University of Pisa, active since 2015 on projects concerning the effects of artificial light at night on marine micro-organisms.
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Luca Delucchi, MS in Geography, and author of the BuioMetria Partecipativa web map in 2008, since then a researcher at the Edmund Mach Foundation in Trento, specialized in geographic information systems and remote sensing.
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The afternoon part of the workshop was dedicated to brainstorming and outlining key activies. During the coming few weeks the working group, in collaboration with some subject who could not physically be in Florence, but expressed their interest in participating in this effort, will proceed to define a set of joint actions on the topic of promotion and protection of the night sky.
We thank Fondazione Osservatorio Ximeniano for hosting the workshop (and you can check out some indoor details of the anciente observatory dome from the image above).
For more information: bmp@pibinko.org or +393317539228