“Water Hackers ” empowers scientists, designers, students and public authorities to make knowledge on water quality more accessible. Even though ‘water’ is an important asset within our urban environment - from our water tap to the river flowing under a bridge, from the rainwater to the grey-water pouring in the canals - nowadays citizens are strongly detached from the hidden dynamics of nature. We would like to bring back the link between natural resources such as water and society. To this aim, we plan to give citizens (mostly youngsters) the opportunity to monitor water quality during their everyday life. Although analysing water might seem a complex activity for experts, a number of affordable Do- It- Yourself (DIY) tools are available for domestic experimentation. We see a lot of potential in these democratic tools because they empower young citizens in understanding environmental science in an interactive way. The purpose of this project is to build a public participation digital mapping to befor used by young citizens to monitor and record water quality in their area, as a part of a Citizen Science initiative.

Water scarcity, contamination, disinformation and, privatisation of water resources are challenges that our society will face in the future. For us it i’s important to create awareness for the citizens of tomorrow: children and teenagerss that will have an active role in helping create awareness about these topics and encouraging to undertake a study path that can create an impact oin society. To this aim, the co-design of new public services, by integrating society, may help to bring about innovative solutions to the aforementioned issues.