Does citizen science have an impact on the environment and society?

Does citizen science have an impact on the environment and society?

Reptes, idees i solucions per fer ciència ciutadana útil i amb impacte Barcelona, November 21, 2018

Luigi Ceccaroni Earthwatch

Definition of citizen science Citizen science is work undertaken by civic educators together with citizen communities to advance science, foster a broad scientific mentality, and/or encourage democratic engagement, which allows society to deal rationally with complex modern problems.

Ceccaroni, L., Bowser, A., & Brenton, P. (2017). Civic Education and Citizen Science: Definitions, Categories, Knowledge Representation. In Analyzing the Role of Citizen Science in Modern Research (pp. 1-23).

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Example of citizen science Citizen science involving people in data collection Ex.: Citclops/EyeOnWater

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Citizen science is complex and messy

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Citizen science Involvement of citizens

Number of citizens involved

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What is exactly engagement? ● ● ● ● ●

Identifying research questions Designing research, instruments Developing applications, technologies Building and testing instruments, such as low-cost sensors Collecting and analysing data

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Building and testing instruments, such as low-cost sensors

Citclops’s KdUINO monitoring buoy based on Arduino

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What is exactly engagement? ● ● ● ● ●

Identifying research questions Designing research, instruments Developing applications, technologies Building and testing instruments, such as low-cost sensors Collecting and analysing data

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Citizen science vs. crowdsourcing

Public participation in scientific research (PPSR)

Community empowerment

Exploitation 9

Citclops: acquisition, processing, delivery

Luigi Ceccaroni and Jaume Piera (2018). Stakeholder engagement in water quality research: A case study based on the Citclops and MONOCLE projects. In: Hecker, S., Haklay, M., Bowser, A., Makuch, Z., Vogel, J. & Bonn, A. 2018. Citizen Science: Innovation in Open Science, Society and Policy. UCL Press, London. 10

Data acquisition

Citizens’ participation via smart devices

Citizen science involving people in data collection Ex.: Citclops/EyeOnWater 11

Data processing

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Information delivery Ex.: Citclops/EyeOnWater

Mosquito Alert http://www.mosquitoalert.com/

https://www.opalexplorenature.org/ https://natusfera.gbif.es/ ● App-based ● 60.000 app downloads ● 20.000 data points

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Natusfera https://www.opalexplorenature.org/

https://natusfera.gbif.es/ ● ● ● ●

5000 participants internationally 9000 species observed App-based 100.000 data points

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Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) https://www.opalexplorenature.org/

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1.000.000 participants across the UK 4000 schools have taken part, many from areas of high deprivation 3000 organisations have worked with OPAL 300.000 survey packs have been distributed to the public 70.000 surveys submitted, containing 1.5 million data points 20 scientific papers published 16

iNaturalist https://www.opalexplorenature.org/ https://www.inaturalist.org/ ● ● ● ●

1.100.000 participants internationally 190.000 species observed App-based 15 million data points

Primary goal: to connect people to nature Secondary goal: to generate scientifically valuable biodiversity data 17

Citizen-science goals? â—? Primary goal: to connect people to nature â—? Secondary goal: to generate scientifically valuable biodiversity data

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Citizen science Citizen science is work undertaken by civic educators together with citizen communities to advance science, foster a broad scientific mentality, and/or encourage democratic engagement, which allows society to deal rationally with complex modern problems.

Ceccaroni, L., Bowser, A., & Brenton, P. (2017). Civic Education and Citizen Science: Definitions, Categories, Knowledge Representation. In Analyzing the Role of Citizen Science in Modern Research (pp. 1-23).

“La ciencia ciudadana es un trabajo realizado por educadores cívicos junto con las comunidades ciudadanas para promover la ciencia, fomentar una mentalidad científica amplia y/o animar el compromiso democrático, lo que permite a la sociedad abordar racionalmente los problemas modernos complejos.”

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Citizen-science goals ● To advance science ● To foster a broad scientific mentality in citizens ● To encourage democratic engagement of citizens and communities Environmental citizen-science: ● To solve complex environmental problems, for example generating scientifically-valuable biodiversity data ● To empower (additional) people to join the debate about the future of the environment, including policy formulation and delivery

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Citizen-science goals ● To advance science ● To foster a broad scientific mentality in citizens ● To encourage democratic engagement of citizens and communities Health-related citizen-science: ● To solve complex health problems, for example generating scientificallyvaluable data about diseases ● To empower (additional) people to join the debate about the future of health management, including policy formulation and delivery

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Message from a policy maker (and funder), e.g. the European Commission ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Show me why citizen science is relevant to the policy process.

Prove that the data are of good quality.

Prove that you can do this over a long period of time.

Prove that you can cover the spatial scale that matters to the development of policy at the European level.

What I see is lots of small-scale projects, great socially, which produce lots of local data that are here today and gone tomorrow.

Prove that you have got longevity.

Prove that you have got accuracy.

Prove that you can give me data sets that I can feed in to the policy process.

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ECSA, CSA, ACSA and the ten principles 1. Citizen science projects actively involve citizens in scientific endeavour that generates new knowledge or understanding.

2. Citizen science projects have a genuine science outcome.

3. Citizen science provides benefits to both science and society.

4. Citizen scientists may participate in various stages of the scientific process.

5. Citizen scientists receive feedback from the project.

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ECSA, CSA, ACSA and the ten principles 6. Citizen science, as with all forms of scientific inquiry, has limitations and biases that should be considered and controlled for.

7. Where possible and suitable, project data and meta-data from citizen science projects are made publicly available and results are published in an open access format.

8. Citizen scientists are suitably acknowledged by projects.

9. Citizen science programs offer a range of benefits and outcomes which should be acknowledged and considered in project evaluation.

10. The leaders of citizen science projects take into consideration legal and ethical considerations of the project.

ACSA version of the ten principles, 2018

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https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/browse-books/citizen-science (2018)

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The view of the policy maker (again) ● ● ● ●

How do I do citizen science?

How do we target the right people?

How do we get the right messages across?

What is the critical mass of engaged citizens, to connect society with politics?

5%? 10%? 17%?

● How do we measure the impact of citizen science?

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Europe: explicit funding since 2012 ● 2012: first citizen-observatory wave (20M€) ● 2015: second citizen-observatory wave (20M€) ● 2018: first SwafS citizen-science projects (6M€) ○

Citclops CITI-SENSE COBWEB WeSenseIt OMNISCIENTIS

EU-Citizen.Science (coordination action, ECSA strongly involved)

GroundTruth2.0 GROW LandSense Scent ○

MICS (research on impact evaluation)

● 2019: second SwafS citizen-science projects (12.5M€)

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Europe: new funding in 2019 ● Horizon 2020 ○

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TOPIC : Exploring and supporting citizen science ■

Topic identifier:SwafS-15-2018-2019

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Deadline:02 April 2019

TOPIC : Consolidating and expanding the knowledge base on citizen science

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Topic identifier:SwafS-17-2019

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Deadline:02 April 2019

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Beyond Europe, beyond biodiversity Real world: ● Collecting air-quality, water-quality and other environmental data ● Collecting critical information for emergency response Virtual world: ● Describing the structure of age-related enzymes ● Mapping the 3-D structure of neurons in the brain ● Discovering new classes of galaxies ● Mapping the surface of Mars ● Improving predictive models for coastal change ● Collecting personal genomic/health data for biomedical research ● Tagging archival records Holdren memorandum, USA, 2015

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The value of citizen science â—? USA, 2 million citizen scientist working on biodiversity research: â—‹

$ 2 billions / year

Theobald, E. J., Ettinger, A. K., Burgess, H. K., DeBey, L. B., Schmidt, N. R., Froehlich, H. E., ... & Parrish, J. K. (2015). Global change and local solutions: Tapping the unrealized potential of citizen science for biodiversity research. Biological Conservation, 181, 236-244.

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Obama citizen-science act, 2015 ● ● ● ●

No barriers to adopt and use citizen science by federal agencies Citizen science integrated into the institutional framework Report on citizen-science impact over five years Trump did not change the act.

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Citizen-science global partnership ● Sharing the best practice from ECSA, CSA and ACSA ● Starting similar associations in other parts of the world ● Expansion beyond biodiversity: ○

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Health ■

Global Mosquito Alert

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Urban air quality

Environment ■

Plastic waste in the aquatic environment

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Water quality

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Aggregation of data ● ● ● ●

CSA Data and Metadata International Working Group COST Action on Citizen Science ECSA, ACSA WeObserve project [https://www.weobserve.eu/] All data are understood and interoperable

https://www.cs-eu.net/sites/default/files/media/2018/06/COST-WG5-GenevaDeclaration-Report-2018.pdf 33

Aggregation of data: Citizen Science Ontology

https://www.cs-eu.net/news/wg-5-deliverable-citizen-science-ontology 34

Aggregation of data Environment Live knowledge platform (UN) Environment Live’s Citizen Science portal: ● Health ● Biodiversity ● Hydro-meteorology and air quality ● Oceans ● Pollution ● Maps ● Waste https://environmentlive.unep.org/involved 35

Citizen science impact on SDGs ● ● ● ●

A powerful addition to the activities going into the SDGs Production of data with valuable spatial and temporal scale A people-centred approach New models of partnerships

● Example: SDG indicator 6.3.2 (UN GEMS + Earthwatch) ○

Oxygen

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Salinity

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Nitrogen

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Phosphorus

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Acidification 36

â—? Provide comprehensive metrics and instruments to evaluate citizen science impacts â—? Implement toolboxes for methods application, information visualisation, and delivery to decision makers, citizens and researchers â—? Foster a citizen-science approach to increase the extent to which scientific evidence is taken up by policy makers through recommendations and guidelines 37

Does citizen science have an impact on the environment and society?

Reptes, idees i solucions per fer ciència ciutadana útil i amb impacte Barcelona, November 21, 2018

Luigi Ceccaroni lceccaroni@earthwatch.org.uk