Citizen science through Cos4Cloud
Citizen observatories can play an important role in research, engaging the wider public on scientific topics and enabling citizens to share observations with experts. We spoke to Dr Jaume Piera and Ángela Justamante about the work of the Cos4Cloud project in developing technological services designed to enhance citizen science observatories. A number of citizen science observatories have been established over recent years, through which people can share photos, environmental measurements and other data relevant to scientific research. This is highly valuable to scientific experts, giving researchers access to far more data than they could gather on their own, now the team behind the Cos4Cloud project are working to enhance the technologies used in citizen science. “There are nine citizen observatories participating in the project. One of them is iSpot, a citizen science platform that gathers biodiversity data, mainly photos. Another is called CanAirIO, a do-it-yourself initiative which focuses on monitoring air quality,” outlines Ángela Justamante, communication technician at CREAF, a research centre in Barcelona, one of the partners in the Cos4Cloud project. The project’s agenda centres around using a co-design methodology to develop thirteen technological services to improve citizen science technologies. “We’ve created services external to the observatories so that any citizen observatory can use the one it needs,” says Dr Jaume Piera, researcher and the coordinator of the project at the ICM-CSIC, based also in Barcelona. Dr Piera is also research associate at CREAF and the coordinator of the European projects Minke and ANERIS and the citizen observatory MINKA. www.euresearcher.com
Citizen science These services have been co-designed with the citizen science community to address its needs, with the aim of increasing both the quantity and quality of observations. One of these services is Cos4Bio, developed by Bineo Consulting in the Cos4Cloud framework, which is designed to bring biodiversity observations held at observatories like iSpot or Artportalen together into a single location. This makes it much easier for experts to access data that may be of interest to them, for example recent images of frogs. “The system connects to the different citizen
observatories, therefore, an expert, by learning or by experience, can download the pictures that have been identified as frogs from all of them directly in Cos4Bio, rather than going to each citizen observatory one by one. The expert has also a new interface, and can validate all the frogs in the pictures, then the system returns that classification to the different citizen observatories,” continues Dr Piera. “This is mutually beneficial. It is much easier for the experts to download all the relevant data.” Another example of a Cos4Cloud service is MOBIS, which enables app developers to
Cos4Cloud’s workshop: Innovative tools to introduce citizen science into schools Ktima Syngrou park (Athens) Credit Ángela Justamante.
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create integrative citizen science apps to allow users to report environmental information as well as biodiversity observations, specially designed for collecting data from DIY devices in a single application. This way, a user can report environmental and biodiversity observations in one place. For example, a developer or a researcher interested in measuring water quality and getting airquality readings for their work would be able to build an app to collect this data instead of using several apps. MOBIS has been developed by DDQ. Apart from co-designing the services, Cos4Cloud has also organised a series of testing activities for the citizen science community to directly use the services in real-world scenarios. For example, Cos4Cloud recently organised an event to test FASTCATEdge, a service to build a do-it-yourself camera trap that records videos and pictures of wildlife activity, and FASTCAT-Cloud, a website service to upload and analyse nature videos and pictures coming from camera traps, with participants from the Catalan FELIS group, a project coordinated by the Catalan Institute of Natural History that uses camera traps to monitor Catalan mammals, focusing on the wildcat (Felis silvestris). The aim was to address FELIS group’s uncovered needs when using a camera trap. FASTCAT-Edge and FASTCATCloud have been developed by DynAikon. “Moreover, Cos4Cloud’s partner in Greece, The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), has also done an excellent job in integrating some of the citizen observatories that participate in Cos4Cloud into the Greek schools practice. They have also introduced some of the services in the training of school teachers and educational activities in the schools,” mentions Dr. Piera. For example, NKUA organised a workshop to show teachers the potential of using ‘MECODA’, an online tool to analyse and view citizen science data, for students to analyse the data they collect with the citizen science platforms and introduce them to some statistical concepts. To showcase its potential they used the OdourCollect data in Greece and practised with these data by answering some questions such as: which categories of odours are the most prevalent in Greece (urban, agriculture, wastewater, etc.); the most common hedonic tone in each region, etc.
BioMARató 2021, Bioblitz organised by Cos4Cloud. Els ponts de Rosamar (Catalonia). Credit Xavier Salvador ICMCSIC researcher.
“Cos4Cloud being part of the EOSC will consolidate and clearly locate the role of citizen science in the EOSC ecosystem,” highlights Dr. Piera. This means that the citizen science data, services, and tools will be together with other scientific data and tools, which have been made available to the scientific community. This way, citizen science data can gain robustness and trust in the eyes of the academic and political fields.
There’s an exchange of knowledge with citizen observatories. Some people can provide expertise in terms of identifying species, while others may have a deep understanding of local conditions of the ecosystems, and other contribute with data analysis. Cos4Cloud Toolbox and Evidence Hub
Cos4Cloud beyond the technological tools
All the materials Cos4Cloud has developed will be available in the Cos4Cloud Toolbox and Evidence Hub hosted in the OpenLearn Create (OLC), developed by The Open University in the Cos4Cloud project framework. These include the
Alongside creating these technologies, Dr Piera and his colleagues are looking into the idea of essentially merging different observatories, part of the goal of creating a more inclusive means of collaboration between scientists and wider society. “There’s an exchange of knowledge with citizen observatories. Some people can provide expertise in terms of identifying species, while others may have a deep understanding of a specific project and the local peculiarities,” he outlines. “It may be that someone is an expert on birds, but it is the people who live in a particular area who know where you are most likely to find rare species.” This helps to widen participation in science, giving people the opportunity to not just collect data, but also to create projects on the topics that matter to local communities. A group of people may want to monitor the health of their local woodland for example, in which case they
European Open Science Cloud The thirteen services that Cos4Cloud has developed will be available in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), connecting these services with a wider, pan-European infrastructure.
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communications materials to explain the services, the links to access the services and case studies the project has developed, as well as policy briefings, educational resources, best practices guidelines, handbooks, videos and all the materials and knowledge related to Cos4Cloud. The aim is that the citizen science community can take advantage of this knowledge and materials after the project reaches its conclusion.
Cos4Cloud workshop innovative tools to introduce citizen science into schools, Ktima Syngrou park (Athens) Credit Ángela Justamante.
EU Research
can gather data and submit it for analysis via a citizen observatory. “An individual or group can provide that data, then an expert can conduct ecological analysis,” says Dr Piera. This again is a win-win situation, giving experts access to more data, while also engaging the wider public and encouraging an interest in science. “Maybe a teacher is interested in exploring a particular area with their students, and is looking to create a school project. Usually, a teacher won’t be able to identify everything, but they can collect a lot of information and enlist the help of experts. The students are also often very proud that experts are identifying species from their observations,” continues Dr Piera. “In the past it was often thought that only academics could address research questions. Now we are widening participation through very powerful technologies. This is the philosophy of the new citizen science platform MINKA. We have developed it from the EMBIBOS research group at the ICM-CSIC and will integrate some of the services Cos4Cloud has created, among others, Pl@ntNet-API” One of the citizen observatories involved in the project, CanAirIO, has already played a major role in highlighting air quality issues in the Colombian capital Bogota. While many people alleged that public transport in the city was responsible for a lot of pollution, the city council claimed the situation wasn’t as bad as claimed. “The council put in expensive instrumentation at certain stations, and these instruments showed levels of air pollution were not particularly high,” says Dr Piera. However, by enabling citizens to make air quality measurements using the low-cost CanAirIO device, Dr Piera says the observatory helped provide a more detailed picture. “When people started building their own devices which they could take with them on public transport they were able to demonstrate that particle levels were very high in some areas that hadn’t previously been monitored,” he explains. “This prompted efforts to identify
Cloud workshop innovative tools to introduce citizen science into schools Ktima Syngrou park (Athens) Credit Ángela Justamante
Co-designed citizen observatories for the EOS-Cloud
Project Objectives
Cos4Cloud is a project to boost citizen science technologies by developing thirteen services to increase the quantity and quality of biodiversity and environmental observations. Cos4Cloud has made these services available in the new European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), a virtual space aimed at the European scientific community, so anyone interested can use them.
Project Funding
This Project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no 863463.
Project Partners
https://cos4cloud-eosc.eu/the-project/team/
Contact Details areas where air quality was a major problem. This was because of people bringing data to the council showing that air quality was not as good as had been thought.”
Citizen observatories as a research infrastructure Citizen observatories are relatively inexpensive in comparison to other major research infrastructures, and Dr Piera believes that funding them over the longer term would bring significant benefits to wider society. “These infrastructures are close to society, and at the same time citizen observatories also provide a lot of information that could be useful in terms of environmental management and biodiversity monitoring,” he points out. This information provides a strong evidence base that can then inform decisions on policy around environmental challenges, which are set to grow ever more pressing. “We will need to address a lot of socio-ecological problems in future due to the impact of climate change, and we will need this kind of information,” says Dr Piera. Testing FASTCAT photo group (participants coordinators of the activity) in the natural park Sant Llorenç del Munt i l’Obac (Barcelona, Catalonia). Credit Cos4Cloud
www.euresearcher.com
Cos4cloud
Jaume Piera H2020 Cos4cloud and H2020 MINKE coordinator Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) Passeig Marítim Barceloneta 37-39 Barcelona 08003 W: www.icm.csic.es Jaume Piera
Ángela Justamante
Jaume Piera is an engineer, biologist, and doctor in environmental sciences. He carries out his research at the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) and is an associate researcher at CREAF. Currently, his research activity is focused on monitoring systems based on citizen science. He coordinates the European Horizon 2020 projects Cos4Cloud and MINKE and the citizen science platform MINKA and participates in the MONOCLE, ARSINOE and ECS projects. Ángela Justamante is a biologist, specialized in scientific communication. She works at the communication department of CREAF and is part of the Cos4Cloud communication team in Cos4Cloud, together with Sonia Liñán (ICM-CSIC). Ángela also has experience in the biomedical research, consultancy and scientific publishing sectors.
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