About me

For some links with a summary of 2023 activities, please see: https://www.pibinko.org/pibinko-org-network-jug-band-colline-metallifere-a-presentation-as-of-oct-2023/

My name is Andrea Giacomelli, aka pibinko. This is the phonetic transcription of the Sardinian word pipinco (or pipincu), meaning extremely meticulous. The situations documented on this site are made possible by a team which we refer to as the “pibinko.org network”. The main components of this team are listed in the “collaborations” page.

To get an idea of our overall activities, you may browse the site starting from the main menu sections, or one of the blog posts randomly listed each time you go to the home page, or follow the categories or the tags (a list is presented on the right side of the site).

pibinko.org’s home base in Tatti, Southern Tuscany

I was trained as an environmental/land planning engineer (1993) and a PhD in hydrology (1997) at Politecnico di Milano. From a technology standpoint my core expertise is in geographic information systems (GIS) and environmental data management, with 25 years of international experience (working in four languages), as well as local-scale projects, either in rural or metropolitan areas.
I have been working first in an academic setting (1994-1996), then in applied research and technology transfer (1997-2002), followed by a corporation (2002-2010), and since 2011 as an independent researcher and consultant, based in Southern Tuscany.

During a survey in Sardinia, January 2017.

At the European level, since 1997 I have been following the geomatics sector, worked on several research projects (funded by FP3, FP4, FP7, HORIZON2020, COST). Between 2010 and 2012 I worked as a facilitator for the creation of the data specifications of the INSPIRE Directive on spatial data infrastructures.

Further expanding on the topic of interactions with institutional bodies, since 2004 I have been periodically involved in workshops and consultation related to the definition of strategies and agendas at various organisational levels (from small municipalities to the European Commission).

In 2002, after five years of work in Sardinia, I returned to Milano, as a senior GIS expert for large multinational environmental remediation studies and industrial utility surveys. In parallel to this, I started to develop a series of independent project concerning the promotion and the protection of assets in the areas of culture, environment, and open innovation, with significant components of participatory methods and communication.

The combination of these elements, applied primarily -but not exclusively- to the development of some inner rural areas of Southern Tuscany, has led to the creation of initiatives which were initially considered intriguing and creative but somewhat “out of the box”. However, in time, the same operations have determined the consolidation of an interdisciplinary international network offering services and products integrating the peculiarities of a territory with innovative solutions.

The S. Galgano abbey, South of Siena, seen by Federico Giussani, one of the most active “buiometristas” in our participatory night sky monitoring network.

Our most structured initiative to date is called BuioMetria Partecipativa (BMP), which may be translated as “participatory darkness monitoring”. This is a porject combining environmental observations with outreach and communication activities for the promotion and protection of night skies, seen not just with an astronomy perspective. The BMP initiative has received multiple awards and recognitions. Among others, in 2009 we won a prize (ranking fourth in a list of over 900 entries) as a “scientific and technologic passion”, in 2015 we were invited to the Eye on Earth conference (being one out of five Italians participating, and the only one with an Italian project), and to the Ecocity World Summit in Abu Dhabi. On the same topic we have frequent invitations to give lectures and seminars in universities and other cultural institutions.
Since 1998 I have been interested in the relationship between technologies and people (initially focusing on information technologies, and then extending the scope). In this context, since 2006 I have been dedicating increasing energies to the development of projects centered on the participation of people to cultural, scientific, or technological initiatives.


As a line of action related to planning and community engagement, it might be of interest to recall

I am author or co-author of some 20 scientific publications, and in parallel a media visibility above the average of the environmental engineers I know (for some reason, about once a year one of our projects gets at least national attention, without having a media manager)

Since 1986 I am interested in music and rhymes. As a recent development of my environmental outreach activities, I launched in collaboration with various music experts the Metalliferous Hills Jug Band. This is a professional rock-blues project, where performances combining live entertainment and awareness raising are proposed.

Many pibinko.org activities have determined unexpected positive socio-economic impacts, including presence of visitors in areas, and parts of the year, where visitors are not frequent or completely absent, jobs for various people, and educational credits for various other folks.

pibinko, Simone Sandrucci and Federico Giussani at M’illumino di Meno 2019 in San Vincenzo (Tuscany)

For more information and contacts: info@pibinko.org or +393317539228