Responsible, Trustworthy, and ethical AI in citizen science

The use of AI techniques (such as machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision) is increasing rapidly across the participatory sciences. Such techniques are used throughout the research process, such as cleaning data before presenting it to volunteers, using volunteers to contribute to the training of machine learning models, in the field data collection aided by computer vision, and creating collaborations between humans and AI to make tasks more engaging and of higher quality. Whilst this can improve the scientific process, it is important to understand the limitations of the use of these techniques, as well as consider the impact on how volunteers understand their role in participatory science. How practitioners communicate the use of AI to volunteers and continue to emphasize the importance of their contributions is also extremely important. To be beneficial to all in the participatory science community, the use of AI must be responsible, ethical, and trustworthy. However, it is not always clear what this means and how it can be applied. This study asks: -What are the opportunities and drawbacks of using AI techniques in citizen science? -What does it mean to be responsible, ethical, and trustworthy in the use of AI? -How should the use of AI in citizen science be advanced? If you are (or have been) involved in planning, carrying out, or taking part in citizen science projects, you are invited to take part in an online survey about your perceptions of the use of AI in citizen science. The survey should take around 20 minutes and you will be asked about -Your experience with citizen science projects -Your experience of AI -Opinions on how/why AI should/should not be used in citizen science -The effects of AI use on volunteers -What the terms ‘responsible’, ‘trustworthy’, and ‘ethical’ mean in the context of using AI in citizen science -How citizen science and human-AI collaboration should develop in the future The results will be presented at the Conference for Advancing Participatory Science in Portland, Oregon, at the end of May 2025.

Assessment of the ecological quality of urban streams in the context of One Health

Join our upcoming webinar which is focused on assessing the ecological quality of urban streams within the One Health framework. The event will delve into the research sites of OneAquaHealth, with representatives from Coimbra, Toulouse, Benevento, Toulouse, and Oslo showcasing their unique attributes, sampling endeavors, and local partnerships. The project will host discussions on interactions with non-project sites across the EU, USA, and Asia, highlighting potential challenges and fostering collaborations.

Enhancing Air Quality Sensor Networks for citizen science. Clustering approaches by COMPAIR, FunSNM and SOCIOBEE

Citizen science (CS) involves public participation and collaboration in scientific research to increase scientific knowledge. Despite its potential, producing CS collected data that is perceived as trustworthy enough to be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and influence policy-making remains a challenge, in part due to issues involving data accuracy and standardisation. For example, the use of mobile field sensors in CS provides us with the opportunity to monitor air quality at a higher spatial resolution, but requires more thorough data analysis. Join us for a webinar featuring three short talks on the lessons learnt and recommendations from leading EU Horizon projects, COMPAIR, FUNsnm and SOCIO-BEE, to improve the reliability of air quality CS sensor networks. The session will conclude with a discussion among the speakers and the audience. This webinar is open to anyone interested in air quality sensor networks and CS. Talks & Speakers: - Local source detection using mobile “low-cost” particle matter (PM) sensors. Bram Verbeek (COMPAIR & VMM) - Metrology, the science of measurement, how does it relate to citizen science? Gertjan Kok (FunSNM & VSL) - Addressing the challenges of citizen science air quality measurements in the SOCIO-BEE project. Sergi Udina (SOCIO-BEE & Bettair Cities) Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUpduygrTIoHtb8lISfAYqI48jsvvDCSDqF The event is part of the SOCIO-BEE project. More info here: https://socio-bee.eu/

Pathways to increase the uptake of citizen science generated data by local policy makers

Join SOCIO-BEE for an online workshop dedicated to exploring how to leverage the impact of CS-generated data, particularly in the realm of air quality, on local policy-making. Rosamund Adoo Kissi Debrah from Ella Roberta Family Foundation, will give a keynote talk on, ‘The importance of personal stories in creating global change’, and you will hear about the experiences accumulated by the EU Horizons SOCIO-BEE and CitiObs projects. Following this, participants will have the opportunity to engage in interactive sessions aimed at exploring strategies to overcome challenges facing CS projects related to accessibility, scalability and data quality.

Empowering and skilling citizens to become drivers towards a climate neutral and sustainable Europe through citizen science

Citizen Science has the power to deliver major change in the way the EU Green Deal objectives are delivered. If we can get just 15% of the population of Europe engaged to tackle behavioural change issues through citizen science nearly 70 million people would be driving change on issues such as air quality, climate change and sustainable lifestyles. Come and learn about the cutting-edge research that is seeking to make this possible. The event will have a speaker from the UNEP as well as presentations from 7 Green Deal Call projects on their work across the EU: AURORA, I-CHANGE, SOCIO-BEE, COMPAIR, ECF4CLIM, GreenSCENT and PSLifestyle. The event will be of particular interest to policy makers, researchers and others interested in finding out more from forefront of climate change research and innovation.

Citizen Science: New ways to engage people for more liveable cities [CitiMeasure Final Event]

Join us to celebrate the completion of the CitiMeasure project! For the past two years, our mission has been to engage citizen science practitioners in developing tools and instruments for more liveable cities. In doing so, we launched the first online inventory of participatory air quality initiatives in Europe; we developed guidelines on behaviour and policy change in citizen science; and we came up with competencies and recommendations to increase digital inclusion in citizen science projects. As we look back on past achievements, we will also discuss what the future holds for citizen science. What does it take to make it more mainstream? How do we ensure that citizen science projects are accessible to all? And why is citizen participation so crucial for shaping the cities of tomorrow? Register here: https://teams.microsoft.com/registration/Cokv0QqVgEaMp1o28Iic0w,E8q7IUWJ2UyrJtA3WOrCQg,n3HBKWnCMkOaOOMTvBoenw,R9aTRagBfEeG-filZ_e6zw,yVg_cplABk-qc1YciY5iOQ,QeFCcgy2_0mnXv0qE-1Z_Q?mode=read&tenantId=d12f890a-950a-4680-8ca7-5a36f0889cd3

Why do citizen science? The tension between data and engagement

Citizen Science is an increasingly popular approach to scientific research that involves collaboration between professional scientists, societal actors, and the public. One of the challenges of Citizen Science is balancing the need for accurate and reliable data with the desire to engage and involve as many people as possible in the research process. This co-organised Hot Pot will feature a panel of experts in Citizen Science who will discuss their experiences and perspectives on how to balance data quality with community engagement in Citizen Science projects. The panelists will cover topics such as the importance of community engagement in Citizen Science, the challenges of ensuring data accuracy and reliability, and strategies for achieving a balance between these two goals. The event will include time for audience questions and discussion, providing an opportunity for attendees to share their own experiences and insights

Water-ForCE H2020 - Citizen Science for the CAL/VAL of satellite aquatic products

In situ data acquisition is an expensive process that needs high-frequency and broad spatial coverage to be fully useful in remote sensing calibration and/or validation exercises. An important new source of spatially intensive data acquisition, the crowd sourcing carried out inside of Citizen Science initiatives, has been developed in previous projects within the EU by, among other things, the development of tools and citizen observatories solutions. We will hear the experiences of Citizen Science tools developers and users and Citizen Science experts, as a basis for discussion during our expert panel time afterwards. Our aim is to fully explore the possibilities of Citizen Science for calibration and validation of Copernicus water quality and quantity products, focused in the identification of: Opportunities/potential for Cal/Val Gaps & problems Identified Needs Data Quality, format and uncertainties

Cos4Cloud and its services for the citizen science community

Cos4Cloud is a EU-funded project that is co-designing, prototyping and implementing a number of new tools and services that address the technological challenges shared by citizen observatories. These services can help citizen observatories to improve data and information quality of observations and can be used as modules, so that any existing citizen science observatory will be able to choose and install the technological services they wish. In this webinar, we will give a short introduction of the project and present two of the services developed: MOBIS and FASTCAT-Cloud. MOBIS is a service to create integrative citizen science apps where you can report all your environmental and biodiversity observations in one Android or iOS app. FASTCAT (Flexible Ai System for CAmera Traps)-Cloud is an open website service that allows you to automatically filter out most unwanted pictures and video streams, keeping images of animals, and to integrate machine learning technology, among other things. The presentations will be followed by a Q&A with speakers. The webinar will last one hour. After closing the webinar we will keep the Zoom channel open for participants to ask further questions and make suggestions about how Cos4Cloud can benefit their citizen science project(s).

High-Level Roundtable and Interactive Workshop: Opening Research Infrastructures - How citizens can play an active role in the advance of ground-breaking research?

Europe is home of major world class research infrastructures which are crucial enablers of research and technological innovation and drivers of multidisciplinary and data-intensive science. Such research infrastructures can also play a key role in eliminating anti-intellectual beliefs in society and providing citizens with the intellectual ammunition needed to become critical consumers of scientific knowledge. This can be done by creating a well-functioning ecosystem that allows new forms of co-creation between professional researchers and citizen scientists by empowering the latter not only with access to research outputs but also to take part in the process of scientific discovery producing high-quality data and adding to the scientific knowledge. In that regard, it is of utmost important to rethink policies to make research infrastructures a key player in citizen science through a consistent involvement of citizens making a genuine and valued contribution to managing the data avalanche.

The uptake of data by citizen scientists, aggregators and end-users: successes, challenges and gaps in the dataflow

We are organising an hybrid scientific session at the Ocean Science Meeting, 27 Feb - 4 March 2022 on ‘The uptake of data by citizen scientists, aggregators and end-users: successes, challenges and gaps in the dataflow’ and are inviting you to submit an abstract by 29 September 2021. Please find more details of the session below. OD11 The uptake of data by citizen scientists, aggregators and end-users: successes, challenges and gaps in the dataflow Keywords: Citizen science, marine data, dataflow, interoperability, acceptance, engagement, policy, data management, validation, end user needs, sustainability, impact Organizers: Patrick Gorringe, patrick.gorringe@smhi.se, James Sprinks, jsprinks@earthwatch.org.uk, Peter Thijsse, peter@maris.nl, Emilie Breviere, emilie.breviere@smhi.se Citizen science is a particularly impactful channel to collect data and its utility has been proven on small scales, yet the groundbreaking, and absolutely necessary, potential of citizen science has yet to be realized. Over the last decade, marine citizen science projects have provided a cost-effective means to collect extensive data sets covering vast spatio-temporal scales where conventional data collection is limited in operation, such as coastal seas. However many initiatives fail to be sustainable, and fail to reach acceptance of their data by scientists and by policy makers. To be efficient and successful a project should provide data with sufficient quality, structure and availability to be used by professionals and ensure that citizen scientists realize and appreciate the impact of their contribution towards the understanding of the scientific big picture. When studying the flow of citizen science data, it follows a series of steps from the providers to the users, via data aggregators. The essential steps of this process are the acquisition, management, flow in key infrastructure, evaluation and impact analyses, use in ocean models, research and forecasting, and public visualization. The objective of the co-organizers is to provide a session during which participants will share experiences on successes and failures, needs and limitations in the data flow chain. The session wishes to be a unique niche for the numerous actors of the data flow in marine citizen science initiatives to meet and exchange. It will explore current and future collaborations, hear from invited experts about wider citizen science initiatives and discuss how marine data aggregators in its next phase can more systematically link with citizen science to not only expand the data provision from citizen science, but also find ways to encourage citizen science to work closer with data aggregators across the full value chain.

Open17 Challenge: Citizen Science for Climate and Gender

Join the 2021 #Open17 Challenge to pitch a project on how to address challenges around the world related to the climate and gender equality, using crowdsourcing and citizen science. You may be selected for online coaching, challenge-based innovation workshops, and even an invitation to pitch your idea to UN experts in Geneva. For details of the challenges that have been curated by the UN, and more information on how to submit your 3-minute video pitch on the Goodwall platform, check the link below. Deadline for Applications: Sunday 3rd October, midnight CEST