10050375People-powered water quality monitoringClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKClean water is essential for human health, but also to tackle climate change. In a review of 1,800 climate adaptation strategies, over 80% were water-related. Our waterways are on the frontline of the climate crisis, but could also be some of our greatest defenders. Looking to the future, it is clear that for the health of people and the planet, it is both urgent and essential that we take action to improve water quality. Planet Patrol is a non-profit movement bringing people together to tackle environmental issues. Since 2016, Planet Patrol events and app users have collected 500 tons of litter, and logged over 450,000 pieces of litter across 83 countries, creating a big data set to support our campaigns and research into litter, plastics, the environment and policy. Following the success of this participation-led approach to litter campaigning, water pollution levels have become an increasingly important priority for us. Initial results show that our water-testing kits work well, but there are engagement and accessibility challenges; a number of our trial testers did not complete the full testing commitment set out in the programme. In this project, Planet Patrol will partner with the design team at Ordnance Survey to consider both the metadata requirements that will deliver planet-centred change and the user journey of our volunteer testers to find interventions, incentives and opportunities to engage the public in a scalable, deliverable and highly effective water quality testing movement that could be rolled out nationwide. The project is informed by Academic Researchers (on behalf of Planet Patrol and as scientific advocates for waterway health) and involves human-centred design techniques that will explore behaviours and motivations with volunteer water testers and Planet Patrol's cohort of Community Guardians as a focus group. This approach will deliver a plan for the future development of a scalable solution that will enable us to gather the data required to build a strong bank of evidence to drive targeted change and deliver significant improvement in the health of the UK's waterways.