Citizen Science

About the programme

Drinkable Rivers engages people to experience their rivers, empowers local organisations to strengthen their specific mission by also monitoring the health of their river by inviting their communities to engage in citizen science.

Currently 80 organisations in 24 countries have joined our Citizen Science programme, so-called ‘hubs’. These hubs are run by enthusiastic people who mobilise volunteers to join. Most hubs are part of local environmental organisations, schools, visitor centres or companies. Each hub underlines the value of drinkable rivers’ mission, applies the same methodology and shares their findings on the data platform.

Strengthen your mission
Drinkable Rivers is happy and proud to work with a rich diversity of organisations throughout the world, each of them having their own mission. These organisations create a measurement plan according to their mission and will activate their volunteers locally.

Join our Citizen Science community!

Do you want to join our Citizen Science programme? That’s fantastic! You can join an existing hub or start and create your own hub. Would you like to get more information? Here is an overview with the FAQs.

On 17 January ’25, we organised an online information session. If you would like to see the recording of this session, watch here.

What does it entail to become a Citizen Science Hub? You will:

• Receive a professional, standardised toolkit (50 measurements of 14 different variables) and access to our instruction manuals and videos;
• Join an onboarding period with weekly assignments via online workshops and videos, to finalise your hub measurement plan;
• Join our data platform for data sharing and mutual learning;
• Communicate about your Drinkable Rivers hub activities with a personalised hub logo;
• Join our Drinkable Rivers Community, receive ongoing support, join measurement weeks and other events.

As Drinkable Rivers hub you join with a long-term commitment to work together towards a drinkable river in your local area as part of your watershed. We ask a one-time contribution of 520 € to join as hub, covering all the above. All hubs use our professional measurement kit and share their research data on our data platform.

We have a special 50% reduction for organisations within the Danube watershed who will join us, apply for this offer prior 31st of January ’25. Express your interest here.

We collect 14 different measurements related to: location, shape, environmental health, chemical composition, physical aspects, and more.

Why do we collect data?

Collecting data creates on the one hand a baseline to compare future measurements with, and on the other hand it enables us to continuously track changes (progress or not) of the water quality in a river or stream. We believe that both these elements empower organisations and communities to track trends over time and along the river. From one measurement we cannot draw any real conclusion. This requires more measurements and time.

The power of the community comes into place as together we can see (and do) much more. If we collect big data of many small tributaries and larger rivers, we can combine this with other researchers, citizen science and country data and visualise both individual and local priorities as well as collective priorities at a river basin level.

The data collected belongs to us all, it is collected by the people, for the people and from the people. Those who contribute to the data platform, can also reap the value from it.

How often do we measure?
This depends on what serves your mission. In your measurement plan, we will help you figure out how you would like to integrate these measurement events in reaching your mission. At least, we ask all organisations to join the two measurement weeks we organise in September and March to feel the power of the community of organisations. Once a year we organise a measurement special in honour of the lifework of Dr. Jane Goodall.

Some of our Explorer hubs

Meet Our Citizen Science team