Regional Mountain Conference

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of environmental hazards in mountainous areas, including floods, slippery roads, thin ice and avalanches. Information on such hazards is often scattered across multiple platforms and not easily accessible, even though it is crucial for residents, visitors and nature-based livelihoods.

Participatory early warning systems (PEWS) offer new ways to address these communication challenges by enabling the sharing of hazard-related information and engaging citizens in knowledge production. PEWS have the potential to support decision-making by individuals, communities and emergency authorities. In contrast to traditional top-down early warning systems, participatory approaches recognise vulnerable individuals not only as recipients of information but also as important sources of knowledge. Local and tacit knowledge can significantly contribute to understanding hazards and environmental change, particularly in remote regions where nature plays a central role in everyday life. Such approaches may also incorporate indigenous knowledge and citizen science practices.

In the MountResilience project (funded by the Horizon Europe programme), we collected citizen observations using Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) to map perceived environmental changes in Utsjoki and Enontekiö, the northernmost municipalities in Finland. The results indicate that environmental change is widely recognised as significant and that there is a strong perceived need for adaptation.

To move beyond a one-off survey and support continuous knowledge exchange, we further developed a mobile application originally created by the Finnish Environment Institute. The modified app will be adopted by the pilot municipalities of Enontekiö and Utsjoki and enables residents and visitors to share observations and warnings about changing environmental conditions. In Arctic communities, changes in ice and snow conditions are particularly critical, while water quality and availability in wilderness areas are also of concern. The application is flexible and can be adapted for different purposes, which should be defined collaboratively with local communities to ensure relevance, ownership and long-term use.