Participatory Dark Sky Quality Monitoring from Italy: interactions between awareness raising and research

The BuioMetria Partecipativa (BMP) project was started in 2008 in Italy with the aim of encouraging non-professionals to collect data on light pollution as a strategy for environmental awareness raising. The BMP project conjugates this component with a scientific approach, making an extensive combined use of various technologies, and allows the collection of valuable quantitative environmental data, using a low-cost device, called Sky Quality Meter (SQM). Measurements can be produced borrowing an SQM from the BMP instrument pool, if the users do not own one. The measurements are loaded to a database on the project web site, and are published in a variety of formats (maps, reports, charts). When it started, the BMP project was one out of two worldwide (and the first in the Western hemisphere) configured as a citizen science initiative involving sensors for night sky quality. In 2011 the system was extended to collect data from fixed SQM stations for continuous monitoring of night sky brightness, with the development of data harvesting procedure ans leading to complement the citizen science measures with more high-quality time series of light pollution data (http://www.cordilit.org). At the national level, the project has obtained considerable recognition, in terms of actual citizen participation, media coverage (in the press, on the radio and on TV), and has received a national award for innovation and environmental awareness raising. Internationally, the BMP project represents one of the longest-running experiences of participatory monitoring of night sky quality, and has developed a significant network of relationships with other institutions engaged in research, awareness raising, and policy support. Among these, the collaboration with the Institute of Biometeorology at the Italian National Research Council has represented a key case. On one side, the collaboration led the institute to investigate further the issue of artificial light at night, deploying sensors and conducting additional outreach activities. On the other side, Attivarti.org -the organization running the BuioMetria Partecipativa project- was exposed to other cases of outreach and environmental education. The presentation will provide an overview of the key accomplishments by these two subjects, including the cooperation with other organizations in Italy and in Europe, including activities related to the Loss of the Night Network.