Grow - Horizon 2020 Citizen Science

The GROW Observatory (GROW) is a European-wide project engaging thousands of growers, scientists and others passionate about the land. We will discover together, using simple tools to better manage soil and grow food, while contributing to vital scientific environmental monitoring.

Challenges

Two challenges that GROW is focusing on are saving our soils and adapting to climate change. By helping people understand and improve both soil and food growing practices, by contributing soil moisture data over a large geographical scale – and overall by helping empower people to work on these topics collaboratively – we can aid climate science, impact on policy, and make a difference in our own actions. This means we can help respond to the crucial sustainability challenges the planet faces.

Growers

Across Europe, hundreds and then thousands of growers will learn together on GROW website and online platform FutureLearn, and take action in growing spaces wherever they are, locally and across Europe. They will get to try out exciting new ways to improve their soil and food production methods. Participants do simple, coordinated soil experiments to capture and make sense of data on their local environment. This helps validate good local growing practices and international environmental monitoring.

HydroNET

HydroLogic is primarily involved in the development of the GROW platform where data collected in GROW can be accessed, visualized and combined with other data. Connections have been established between HydroNET and databases with soil moisture sensor data and crowd-sourced metadata. HydroNET provides API’s that allow scientists and external commercial partners to access GROW data for research purposes and commercial services. In addition, HydroLogic is involved in service design, sensors and sensing and communication activities.

For more information please visit: growobservatory.org

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No. 690199.