Treeps

Privacy Policy – Treeps research project

Information for participants to Part A and Part B of the Treeps study 

We inform you that, according to the New Federal Act on Data Protection (nFADP) and the cantonal legislation on the protection of personal data, the processing of your personal data and all other information collected via the data collection process performed by SUPSI during the Treeps study (Part A and Part B) will be based on respect for principles and responsibilities listed in art. 7, art. 8, and art. 9 of the nFADP. Processing of the collected data may be carried out manually or electronically, or in any case with the aid of computerized or automated tools.

The data collected by the Treeps study (Part A and Part B) aims at understanding the holiday-travel behaviour of the people living, working, or studying in Ticino will also concern categories of data listed in the art. 5 of the nFADP (personal data). Such data will be used, as part of the study, for the following purpose: statistical analysis conducted by SUPSI.

The collected personal data is processed by SUPSI for the performance of the public interest, scientific or statistical research entrusted to it by the research mandate (Legge sull’Università della Svizzera italiana, sulla Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana e sugli istituti di ricerca, art. 1).

With reference to personal data collected via the Treeps study, we inform you that:

  • The data controller is the Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana (SUPSI), based in via Pobiette 11, CH-6928 Manno, e-mail: segreteria@supsi.ch.
  • The responsible for data protection (data protection officer) can be contacted at the e-mail address: privacy@supsi.ch.
  • Your personal data will be processed by persons belonging to SUPSI – ISAAC Istituto sostenibilità applicata all’ambiente costruito, Sustainability and Society team, authorized in relation to their functions and skills.
  • SUPSI will securely store your personal data in its data center, located in Canton Ticino (Switzerland), and in Switchdrive data centers, located in Switzerland.
  • Data relating to interaction with the project’s app (only for those invited to participate in Part B) will be saved on the encrypted servers kept within the European Union, to which only SUPSI researchers from the project team, authorised for this purpose, will have access.
  • SUPSI will keep pseudo-anonymized personal data for the duration of the project. Once this period has expired, SUPSI will delete your pseudo-anonymized data: only impersonal consolidated data will be archived.
  • The personal data you provide will not be used for marketing purposes nor it will be shared with other entities outside the project.
  • The impersonal consolidated data will be used in anonymous and aggregate way for reports and scientific publications. 
  • The impersonal consolidated data may be published online in open research data-bases, such as Zenodo.  
  • All information collected will be made anonymous and securely stored for an indefinite period. 

Provision of your personal data is voluntary and at any time you can refuse to provide it, thus leading to the interruption of your participation in the study.

Apart from the exceptions provided by the regulations for the use of data for scientific research purposes (art. 31 of the nFADP), you have the right at any time to: 

  • Access your personal data and obtain information on the existence of personal data concerning you; 
  • Obtain the correction or deletion of your data or the limitation of its treatment;
  • If the data is in electronic format, request its portability (i.e. a structured format, commonly used and readable by an automatic device);
  • Oppose the processing for legitimate reasons;
  • Submit a complaint to the supervisory authorities.

You can assert your rights by contacting the data controller and/or the data protection officer. Data contained in the Data Controller’s databases will be kept as long as they will be necessary for the purposes for which they were lawfully collected or processed.

Additional information for participants to Part B of the Treeps study 

As indicated in the Treeps Information Sheet, the project’s app also includes a feature allowing interaction with a ChatBot tool provided by the OpenAI company. If you will be involved in Part B, and will interact with the ChatBot tool available in such an app, data about such interactions will also be accessed by the OpenAI company, according to their Terms of use conditions (https://openai.com/policies/eu-terms-of-use) and their Privacy Policy statement (https://openai.com/policies/eu-privacy-policy). 

Please, be reassured that no email address or personal data of yours will be provided by SUPSI to the OpenAI company, and that the only information that OpenAI will access will be the information you will autonomously provide to the ChatBot tool during the interactions you will perform with it in the project’s app.

Finally, we would like to point out that the project app also includes the creation of posts that will be published on an Instagram page. If you create a post, have an Instagram account and have indicated it on the app, your account will be tagged in the post published on Instagram. Instagram’s terms of use (https://help.instagram.com/581066165581870) and the related privacy policy (https://privacycenter.instagram.com/policy) will apply to posts on Instagram. We assure you that no email address or personal data communicated to SUPSI outside of these posts will be provided by SUPSI to Instagram.