Environment Agency: Scaling Citizen Science Through AI-Powered Digital Engagement

The Environment Agency manages thousands of waterways and coastal environments across England, but gathering continuous, on-the-ground intelligence from the people who visit them is challenging and resource-intensive.

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Without a scalable approach to community engagement, valuable observations about water quality, environmental conditions and how people use and experience waterways can be missed every day.

This creates gaps in the Environment Agency’s understanding of what happens between formal environmental monitoring activities. These gaps can make it harder to identify emerging issues, understand local patterns and prioritise where limited resources are most needed.

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Why AI-Powered Citizen Science Matters:

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Traditional environmental monitoring provides valuable structured data, but it cannot capture everything happening across England's waterways every day. 

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AI-powered public engagement provides a scalable way to involve communities in citizen science projects. It allows people to contribute observations while visiting rivers, lakes and beaches as part of their everyday activities.

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For the Environment Agency, this creates an additional source of real-world environmental intelligence. It also supports public participation by giving people an accessible way to learn about and contribute to the environments around them. This combination of formal datasets and local environmental knowledge can provide a richer understanding of changing conditions across rivers, catchments and coastal locations.

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‍Our Solution (an AI Digital Assistant and Digital Team Member):

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Hello Environment is an AI-powered Digital Team Member created by Hello Lamp Post for the Environment Agency. It acts as a digital assistant for citizen science, allowing people to share observations about the rivers, lakes and beaches they visit all-year round.

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The solution combines citizen science technology with location-specific environmental information, making it easier for members of the public to contribute useful observations through natural digital conversations.

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By providing an accessible channel for community data collection, Hello Environment helps turn everyday visits to the water’s edge into opportunities for meaningful environmental participation.

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‍How it Worked: 

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Hello Environment puts the power of citizen science monitoring in the public's pocket, turning everyday visits to rivers, lakes and beaches into opportunities to contribute to a wider environmental evidence base.

Using an AI-powered Digital Team Member, residents and visitors can engage in a natural conversation about what they see and experience. They can also submit environmental observations, and share photographs and location-based information in real time.

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This approach to digital citizen science makes participation straightforward and accessible, without requiring users to download a dedicated app or have specialist environmental knowledge.

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Phase 1 (WaterWatch): First launched as a five-site pilot, visitors were invited to chat with an AI Digital Assistant using QR-enabled signage to share what they could see, experience and observe at the water’s edge, including wildlife, pollution and river usage.

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Phase 2 (BluePrint): Following the pilot, BluePrint developed into a national citizen science programme. Members of the public can now contribute observations from any river, lake or beach in England without relying on physical signage.

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Hello Environment is highly scalable, making it possible to extend citizen science participation to new locations and support a national rollout without significant additional physical infrastructure or resources.

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User Experience:

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Visitors engage in a natural, two-way digital conversation via their mobile phone, and are able to upload photos, share their location and submit environmental observations in real-time on a range of topics, including issues like water quality, pollution and visitor activity.

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The conversational format supports accessible community reporting, allowing people to describe what they see in their own words rather than complete complex forms.

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With location awareness, every interaction is more relevant to the users surroundings. The AI-powered Digital Team Member can provide location-specific content and insight from sources including Swimfo and the Met Office, such as updates on water quality data and pollution risk forecasts.

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Staff Impact:

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By automating the collection and structuring of community observations, Hello Environment gives the Environment Agency access to a larger and more consistent source of environmental intelligence without requiring a corresponding increase in manual data collection or physical resource. 

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Incoming submissions provide valuable contextual information that help complement official datasets . This creates a growing source of public environmental data and helps staff directly understand what communities are seeing and experiencing in their environments.

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With access to a real-time dashboard, staff are able to monitor incoming submissions as they are received, providing greater visibility of emerging issues, trends and hotspots and enabling data to be reviewed and acted upon more efficiently.

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