Privacy Notice for Scientific Research: PerceptEarth Survey

The PerceptEarth Survey processes personal data for scientific research.

This notice explains what personal data are processed, why they are needed, how they are protected and what rights research participants have.

Participation and entry into the optional raffle are voluntary.

University of Helsinki
P.O. Box 3
Fabianinkatu 33
00014 University of Helsinki
Finland

Unit:
Department of Geosciences and Geography, Digital Geography Lab, University of Helsinki

Research contact:
PerceptEarth research team
perceptearth-project@helsinki.fi

Principal investigator:
Milad Malekzadeh
Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Geosciences and Geography, Digital Geography Lab
perceptearth-project@helsinki.fi

The Data Protection Officer of the University of Helsinki can be contacted at:

tietosuoja@helsinki.fi

Personal data are processed to:

• Conduct the PerceptEarth scientific research project.
• Study how people experience pleasant and unpleasant public outdoor places.
• Compare participants’ reported experiences with computational representations of perceived pleasantness.
• Assess the quality, reliability and validity of submitted responses.
• Detect duplicate, automated, incomplete, randomly generated or deliberately misleading submissions.
• Administer the optional raffle for participants whose responses pass the data-quality review.

Research data and raffle contact information have separate purposes. They are separated as soon as the quality review and the raffle have been completed.

Survey and background information

• City name and country.
• Resident or non-resident status.
• Length of residence, when applicable.
• Nationality or nationalities.
• Age group (optional).
• Survey language and version.
• Recruitment-source code, when the survey link contains one.
• Versions of the Participant Information and Privacy Notice you accepted, and when you gave consent.

Location and experience information

• Coordinates of pleasant and unpleasant public outdoor places.
• Pleasant or unpleasant classification.
• Intensity rating.
• Selected reasons for the experience.
• Order in which points were added.
• City, country and place type of each point, looked up from OpenStreetMap.

Map-interaction and quality information

• Map zoom level when a point was placed.
• Time when each point was placed and saved.
• Time spent answering the point questions.
• Whether map search was used and how often the map was moved.
• Whether a marker was moved before saving.
• Duplicate-location and spatial-validation indicators.
• Quality flags generated by the application.
• The researcher’s quality-review decision and reason.

Technical information

• Anonymous survey identifier.
• Submission status and timestamps.
• Result of the automated-submission check.
• A one-way scrambled (hashed) code used briefly to limit repeated submissions; the IP address itself is not stored.

The survey does not collect names, home addresses, dates of birth, continuous GPS tracking or open-ended descriptions. If you choose “Use my current location”, your location is used only to move the map and is not saved.

Raffle information (only if you enter)

• Email address.
• Raffle consent and entry date.
• Eligibility and raffle administration status.

The raffle email is temporarily linked to your survey response so researchers can confirm that the response meets the participation and quality requirements. The research dataset used for analysis never contains the raffle email address.

Personal data are obtained:

• Directly from you, through your survey answers and map points.
• Automatically, from your interaction with the survey map and forms, as described in section 6.

No personal data are obtained from social media profiles, data brokers or other external sources.

The survey does not collect special categories of personal data, such as information concerning health, ethnic origin, political opinions, religion, trade-union membership, sexual orientation, genetic information or biometric identification.

Please do not include sensitive personal information in your responses.

Nationality is collected for descriptive research purposes and is not used to determine ethnic origin.

Scientific research data

Article 6(1)(e) of the General Data Protection Regulation: processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest, namely scientific research under Section 4(3) of the Finnish Data Protection Act.

Your consent to take part concerns voluntary research participation. It is separate from the legal basis for processing research data.

Raffle data

Article 6(1)(a) of the General Data Protection Regulation: your consent.

You may withdraw raffle consent before the raffle is completed by contacting: perceptearth-project@helsinki.fi

Withdrawal does not affect processing that took place lawfully before withdrawal.

Research data can be accessed only by authorised members of the PerceptEarth research team.

The survey runs on the following service providers, which process data on our behalf only to operate the survey:

• Lovable (Lovable Labs Incorporated): the platform used to build, host and operate the survey application (Lovable Cloud), including basic technical error reports.
• Supabase (Supabase Inc.): subprocessor of Lovable Cloud providing the database and anonymous sign-in. The database is located in London, United Kingdom.
• Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc.): delivers the application to your browser and provides the Turnstile automated-submission check.
• OpenStreetMap Foundation: supplies the map images (map tiles) and the place search and address lookup service (Nominatim).
• University of Helsinki email: used only to contact raffle winners.

Research data are not shared with anyone outside the research team. Personal data are not sold or used for advertising.

The research team does not transfer research data outside the European Economic Area.

Some of the service providers listed above are based outside the European Economic Area or use facilities there. The survey database is located in the United Kingdom, which the European Commission has recognised as providing an adequate level of data protection. Where a provider may process or access data in another country, such as the United States, the transfer is protected by safeguards under the General Data Protection Regulation: the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, or the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses.

Personal data are protected through measures including:

• Access limited to authorised researchers with personal accounts and strong passwords.
• Encryption of all data in transit.
• Database access controls (Row Level Security) so participants can only reach their own unsubmitted answers.
• Pseudonymous survey identifiers; no names are collected.
• No IP address stored with research responses.
• Separation of raffle email addresses from research data once the quality review and raffle are complete.
• Removal of identifying information before the anonymised dataset is shared.

Individual map points are never publicly displayed together with personal information.

The application automatically flags responses based on factors such as duplicate points, implausibly rapid completion, insufficient map interaction, repeated submissions or unusual spatial patterns.

These flags only support data-quality review. A researcher reviews the relevant information before deciding to exclude a submission from the research or the raffle.

Disagreement with the PerceptEarth model is never a reason for exclusion.

• Link between your raffle email and your response: removed as soon as the quality review and the raffle have been completed.
• Raffle entries that do not pass the quality review: the email address is deleted completely.
• Email addresses of eligible participants who do not win: deleted once the raffle has been completed.
• Email addresses of raffle winners: kept until the end of the project (the end of 2027) plus one year for auditing purposes, that is until 31 December 2028, and then deleted.
• Anonymised research data, including anonymised quality information: kept indefinitely and made openly available for research purposes.
• Short-term technical records used to limit automated submissions: deleted automatically when they expire.

Research findings may be published in scientific articles, reports, presentations and research communication, using aggregated or anonymised information.

An anonymised dataset will be made openly accessible for research purposes and may be reused in future research. Before release, email addresses and any link to individual participants are removed.

Depending on the legal basis and circumstances, you may have the right to:

• Receive information about processing.
• Request access to your personal data.
• Request correction of inaccurate personal data.
• Request restriction of processing.
• Object to processing based on public interest.
• Withdraw consent for processing raffle contact information.
• Lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority.

Certain rights may be restricted when personal data are processed for scientific research and exercising the right would make the research impossible or seriously impair it, provided that the legal requirements and appropriate safeguards are met.

Once data have been anonymised and can no longer be connected to you, it is no longer possible to identify, access, correct or delete your individual response.

Requests should be sent to: perceptearth-project@helsinki.fi

If you believe that your personal data have been processed unlawfully, you may contact the University of Helsinki Data Protection Officer: tietosuoja@helsinki.fi

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with:

Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman
P.O. Box 800
00531 Helsinki
Finland

Website: https://tietosuoja.fi/en/home