Mohammad Gharesifard

Biography

Mohammad Gharesifard received his BSc. degree in Civil Engineering from IAU University, Iran in 2005. He has seven years of combined study/design and construction supervision work experience in Iran's water sector. During this period he worked for water and environmental consulting companies and was involved in several socio-technical water and sanitation projects. In 2013 he enrolled in Water Resources Management MSc. program at IHE Delft and graduated with distinction in April 2015. Mohammad has a keen interest in studying innovative water management paradigms and especially the role of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in citizen science initiatives. During his MSc. thesis research, he focused on understanding the drivers and barriers for citizen participation in ICT-enabled citizen observatories. He employed a social psychology framework from behavioural sciences to map influential factors on willingness of citizens to share their Personal Weather Station (PWS) data. He carried out this research within the scope of the WeSenseIt  project; an EU-FP7 project in the area of environmental monitoring utilizing Citizen Observatories. Directly after graduation, he streamlined into a PhD funded by the WeSenseIt, and Groundtruth2.0 (A Horizon2020 Research and Innovation project) focusing on different dimensions and dynamics of ICT-based citizen participation in water and environmental management.

Topic

Research Summary

Citizen participation in environmental management (via Citizen Science projects or Citizen Observatories) has been praised for the potential to facilitate better informed, more inclusive, transparent, and representative decision making. However, the capacity to evaluate the dynamic processes that might lead to such promised effects and the short, medium and long term outputs and impacts of these processes, are largely limited. This is due to the fact that there have not (yet) been enough instances of methodological and empirical research that try to conceptualize and evaluate these dynamics and outcomes of citizen observatories. This research tries to address this gap in research by systematically studying the dynamics behind establishment and functioning of two real life citizen observatories in the GroundTruth2.0 project. These two citizen observatories focus on the issue of pluvial floods in 'Land van Heusden en Altena' (the Netherlands) and balancing biodiversity and livelihoods in the Maasai Mara ecosystem (Kenya). The framework developed for this research incorporates multidimensional characteristics of these initiatives, and takes into account the institutional, political and technological context in which the Citizen Observatories are embedded and with which they interact.

Publications

Journal articles:

• Gharesifard, M., Wehn, U., and van der Zaag, P. (2019) Context matters: a baseline analysis of contextual realities for two community-based monitoring initiatives of water and environment in Europe and Africa, Journal of Hydrology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.124144.
• Gharesifard, M., Wehn, U., and van der Zaag, P. (2019) What influences the establishment and functioning of community-based monitoring initiatives of water and environment? A conceptual framework, Journal of Hydrology, forthcoming.
• Gharesifard, M., Wehn, U., & van der Zaag, P. (2017). Towards benchmarking citizen observatories: Features and functioning of online amateur weather networks. Journal of Environmental Management, 193, 381-393. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2017.02.003
• Gharesifard, M., & Wehn, U. (2016). To share or not to share: Drivers and barriers for sharing data via online amateur weather networks. Journal of Hydrology, Vol. 535, pp.181-190. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2016.01.036

Conference papers/abstracts:

• Ajates Gonzalez, R., Wehn, U., Gharesifard, M., Fraisl, D. (2019), Investigating the costs and benefits of citizen observatories in relation to existing in-situ monitoring networks.

  11th International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE 11), September 24-27, Florence, Italy. 

• Wehn, U., Pfeiffer, E., Anema, K., Joshi, S., Vranckx, S., van der Kwast, H., Giesen, R., Maso, J., Gil-Roldan, E., Ceccaroni, L., Almonani, A., Gharesifard, M., and Giller, O. (2019), Co-designing local knowledge co-production for sustainability: the Ground Truth 2.0 methodology. Assist-UK2019: Association for Studies in Innovation, Science and Technology-UK Annual Conference, University of Manchester, September 9-10, Manchester, UK.
• Alfonso, L., Xanthis, A., Mazzoleni, M. Cortes-Arevalo, V.J., Gharesifard M., Wehn u. (2018), Investigating the costs and benefits of citizen observatories in relation to existing in-situ monitoring networks. Oral presentation at the 2nd International Conference on Citizen Observatories for natural hazards and Water Management, 27 – 30 November, Venice, Italy.
• Shafiei, M., Gharesifard, M., Tavakoli Aminiyan, S., Ghanbari, F., Neyshabouri, S., Davary, K (2018). The current situation and future challenges of Mashhad as a water-wise city in Iran, paper submitted to the IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition 2018, 16-23 September 2018, Tokyo, Japan.
• Gharesifard, M., Wehn, U., & van der Zaag, P., Masa, A. (2018), Workshop: What can make or break a citizen observatory? The 8th Living Knowledge Conference, 30 May – 1 June 2018, Budapest, Hungary.
• Wehn, U., Maso, J., van der Kwast, H., Pfeiffer, E., Giesen, R., Vranckx, S., Pelloquin, C., Cerratto Pargman, T., Gharesifard, M. (2018). The Ground truth 2.0 generic methodology tested in six citizen observatories. PICO presentation at the EGU General Assembly 2018, 8 – 13 April, Vienna, Austria.
• Wehn, U., Joshi, S., Pfeiffer, E., Anema, K., Gharesifard, M., & Momani, A. (2017). Addressing the social dimensions of citizen observatories: The Ground Truth 2.0 socio-technical approach for sustainable implementation of citizen observatories. Paper presented at the EGU General Assembly 2017, 23 – 28 April, Vienna, Austria.
• Gharesifard, M., Wehn, U., & van der Zaag, P. (2016). A framework for analyzing the impact of ICT-based citizen science initiatives. Paper presented at the International Conference on Citizen Observatories for Water Management, 7 – 10 June, Venice, Italy.
• Gharesifard, M., Wehn, U., & van der Zaag, P. (2016). Dimensions of citizen observatories: The case of weather observation networks. Paper presented at the 10th GEO European Projects Workshop 2016, 31 May – 2 June, Berlin, Germany.
• Gharesifard, M., Wehn, U., & van der Zaag, P. (2016). Dimensions and dynamics of citizen observatories: The case of online amateur weather networks. Paper presented at the EGU General Assembly 2016, 17 – 22 April, Vienna, Austria. 
• Gharesifard, M. and Wehn, U. (2015)  Participation in citizen science: Drivers and barriers for sharing personally-collected weather data via web-platforms, presentation at the 8th International Conference on ICT, Society and Human Beings (ICT2015), 21-23 July, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.
• Gharesifard, M., & Wehn, U. (2015). Workshop: ICT-enabled Amateur Weather Networks - motivations and barriers for citizen participation, EnviroInfo and ICT4S (pp. 256). Copenhagen, Denmark: University of Copenhagen.
• Gharesifard, M., Jahedan, A., & Molazem, B. (2012). Determining the Suitable Sediment extraction Locations of Existing Sand and Gravel Mines on Boshar River in Iran using HEC-RAS Modeling. Paper presented at the 6th International Conference on Scour and Erosion –ICSE-6, Paris, France.

Books/Book chapters:

• Gharesifard, M., & Wehn, U. (2016). What Drives Citizens to Engage in ICT-Enabled Citizen Science?: Case Study of Online Amateur Weather Networks, Analyzing the Role of Citizen Science in Modern Research (pp. 62-88). Hershey, PA, USA: IGI Global.
• Gharesifard, M. (2015). Mapping the behavioural determinants of ICT-based citizen participation in water management; Case studies of  sharing personally-collected weather data via web-platforms in the Netherlands, UK and Italy. IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, the Netherlands. (MSc Thesis WM-WRM-15.11)