Citizen Science
Drinkable Rivers runs an ambitious Citizen Science programme that enables people to experience and monitor the health of their rivers.
Ultimately, it also helps us to track progress towards our goal:
a world with drinkable rivers.
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 65 organisations in 22 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 2 July, we organised an online information session. If you would like to see the video of this session, please send us an email.
Our upcoming online information session will be scheduled in January 2025. More info soon.
Join a hub
Go to our data platform and join a hub to discover the
health of our rivers, or join a hub in your area as a member
to help take measurements.
Sign up with your email, go to ‘Hubs – Hub List”
and find one that is close to you.
Create a hub
We onboard new hubs every half year. Therefore our subscription deadlines are in January and July.
If you want to register as a new hub, please fill in the form and we’ll get in touch!
Next deadline: January 2025
What does it mean 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, receiving ongoing support, measurement weeks and other events.
As Drinkable Rivers hub you join with a long-term commitment to work together towards a drinkable river and watershed in your local area. 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 collect 14 different measurements related to: location, shape, environmental health, chemical composition, physical aspects, and more.
Why do we collect data?
Collecting data invites us, people, to participate in a more active and informed way with our waters. Engaging other and more people to participate in these measurements, getting more informed and educated and deepening their understanding of the importance of water.
Collecting data, creates on the one hand a baseline in order to compare future measurements with and on the other hand it enables us to continuously track changes (progress or not) of the water quality. We record the found results as data points in our platform. We believe that both these elements empower organisations and communities.
Besides the value for individual organisations and communities, collecting data enables us to track trends over time and along the river. Here the power of the crowd comes into place as together we can see (and do) much more.
If we collect a lot of 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. From one measurement we cannot draw any conclusion. This requires more measurements and time.
The data collected does not belong to any one, 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.
Our Hubs
VechtIJsseldelta
Charlotte & Antoinette
“I want to be able to fill my water bottle with a carbon filter from the Vecht.”
De Wissen
Ingrid
“It’s important that we start to see our rivers and treat them according to their value.”
Nourish Life
Cathrine
“Nourish life, so that all life can be nourished.”
Brummen IJssel
Jan Willem & Michaela
“Work together with nature.”
Meet Our Citizen Science team
Sandra de Vries
Programme Lead
Camille Janssen
Hub Community
Grace Saville
Data Analysis
Drinkable RiversTM CC 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License