The power of computerization of environmental communication

by Eleonora Anello

A Department of awareness. An administration sensitive to the computerization applied to the environmental communication. We talk with the Dr. Massimo Materi, assessor for Information and Statistics Systems, energy policy, consumer protection and the Culture of separate collection of the Municipality of Vercelli (Piedmont, Italy).

Assessor Materi, among the tasks of your Department the consumer protection, the awareness and the diffusion of the culture of the waste separate collection and the monitoring of the results achieved. Could we almost define his as a commissioner which is also involved in environmental communication?
«Certainly yes, the marketing is in this specific case an essential tool for communicating with the citizens. With this delegation, in fact I deal with "Environmental Communication", so the awareness of citizens aimed at the culture of waste collection, is implemented through its various innovative advertising instruments».

Why has your administration chosen to focus on this type of address?
«Unfortunately, we start from a situation of "ecological backwardness”, in the sense that we started late with the differentiation of the waste, also in our territory have always been few the initiatives to involve the citizens with an emphasis on environment. Our Mayor, the lawyer Andrea Corsaro, thought therefore giving greater emphasis to the project of "Separate collection" creating a delegation aimed at raising awareness of the latter! I say you in effect that the results are starting to come to our great satisfaction».

Among the prerogatives of your Department, also the computer and the statistics systems. How do they relate with the environmental issues?
«Truly, as the name suggests, are two distinct and distant delegations as themes, but I tell you how allowed me to tie these two assignments: in terms of awareness of the separate collection, among other things, I'm pursuing an urban experiment (just tested with success a few months ago for my campaign). This is specifically an initiative of viral marketing. We are creating on the territory a series of events with schools, advertising billboards and… of course a special section of our web site and not just, where more than communicate the results of the progress of the separate collection, consistently we show a "good use of waste" without telling the citizen what to do, in that we doesn’t force him to do something, but we intrigued him! In some cases, we launched a message relating to the environment that can arouse curiosity and encourage the citizen to gather informations on its own initiative in terms of differentiation. The goal that is achieved with this method is a responsible involvement, spontaneous and convinced by the user, just because he is forced anything directly, but it's as if he had whispered something of useful. The curiosity then makes its own the rest».

Thanks assessor and good work. More...

Summary only...

Green E-government

by Eleonora Anello

The Department of Environment of Parma launches Parmambiente, new portal dedicated to the territory which has the main objective of strengthening democracy and that is improving the relationship between taxpayers and administrators.
This is a site developed with the dual purpose of comply with the new laws and to make available to citizens a data and services container like analysis, projects and information on the state of the environment, on the levels of pollution, on improvement projects, on best practices adopted by government and, soon, even from the companies in the field of sustainability.

Area easily accessible and searchable, Parmambiente is a good example of "eGovernment". There it shows its main promoter: the assessor Giancarlo Castellani.

Assessor, what are the goals that arise in a administration in the building of a portal as Parmambiente?
«With the new portal we wanted to provide to all interested parties, subject to transparency, convenience and efficiency the information of the "state of the environment of our territory" that can and should be reported promptly to the community. It is important that all may have information about the environment we live in and it is even more in a province like ours, which is famous for its excellent food: excellence that to remain so they need a protected territory. Must not forget that the theme of the environment requires a continuous and constant attention. The goal achieved is therefore to provide an additional services to that staff and offices held regularly, all using the power of computing platform ».

Can the contact and attachment to their territories to improve and change the perception and thus the environmental behaviour?
«Where there is an environment to be protected must generate strong social values, for the simple reason that where there are strong social values, there isn’t the need to protect the environment, these simple words contain in them a fundamental truth that becomes the objective of our daily action through a continuous and extensive work that should be the preservation and protection of the environment to education to the same. There is a phrase that may further explain the importance of working on the values and the perception towards our territory, this phrase by Wendell Berry, poet, writer and above all a farmer for many years in practice first hand and spread throughout the world of traditional, natural and sustainable farming methods , that says about our children and their detachment have toward their environment: "Our children no longer learn to read the great book of nature from their direct experience, nor to interact creatively with the seasonal changes of our planet. Rarely learn where it comes from or where it ends up the water ... "». More...

Summary only...

Eye on Earth: the quality of waters just a click

by Eleonora Anello

What's better, in summer time, to have water quality data of more than 22,000 bathing areas in European seas, rivers and lakes just on click away?
Eye on Earth interactive portal of the European Environment Agency achieved through the partnership with Microsoft is a genuine two-way communication platform that brings together scientific information, thanks to a collection of historical data ranging since 1990 to today, with comments and observations of users through the use of simple icons.

The most interesting project in terms of environmental communication is able to "measure", through a simple graphical interface, as different subjective perception that users have, respect to scientific, and therefore reliable, represented by icons instead used by administrators of the portal.

Eye on Earth is also a social use of technology: not only protects the environment, but fosters communication between citizens and between them and institutions that are open to discussion and participation. Example of dynamic communication with contributions coming from both sides.

Over the next 5 years the portal will be gradually expanded to include information on many other issues (ground level ozone and other forms of air pollution, oil spills, biodiversity, coastal erosion), with the goal of becoming a global observatory for environmental change.

Giving a look at the maps we can see now some discrepancies between scientific data and evaluations of users. The perception of reality differs so much from the purely scientific data? More...

Summary only...