Anticipatory technologies: water monitoring apps and ubiquitous environmental communication in the climate crisis

The purpose of this project is to advance knowledge about environmental communication as an everyday situated practice and about the role of information technologies in environmental communication.

The project aims to nuance the knowledge of environmental monitoring apps as an anticipatory technology: an everyday tool with which citizens in different parts of the world construct understandings of environmental problems. As water levels rise, environmental monitoring in the form of water apps have become increasingly popular.

Water apps inform users about water levels and encourage different actions based on these predictions.

They constitute subtle mundane knowledge infrastructures where scientific, commercial and political knowledge is communicated, imagined and anticipated.

But few studies have examined how users interpret and act on this information, insights critical to sustainable transitions and associated actions aimed at mitigating environmental problems.

The project investigates the use of five commercial and governmental water apps in three different contexts - Singapore, Denmark and Italy. These countries face similar water problems but have different socio-cultural and political associations with water.

Using digital methods and interviews with app users, the case studies aim to produce situated knowledge of water app use to further understandings of how environmental monitoring is acted upon and how it might - or might not - further sustainable transitions.