Citizen Science & Scientific Crowdsourcing – week 5 – Data quality

This week, in the "Introduction to Citizen Science & Scientific Crowdsourcing", our focus was on data management, to complete the first part of the course (the second part starts in a week's time since we have a mid-term "Reading Week" at UCL). The part that I've enjoyed most in developing was the segment that addresses …

Patterns of contribution to citizen science biodiversity projects increase understanding of volunteers’ recording behaviour

One of the facts about academic funding and outputs (that is, academic publications), is that there isn't a simple relationship between the amount of funding and the number, size, or quality of outputs. One of the things that I have noticed over the years is that a fairly limited amount (about £4000-£10,000) are disproportionately effective. …

A review of volunteered geographic information quality assessment methods

One of the joys of academic life is the opportunity to participate in summer schools - you get a group of researchers, from PhD students to experienced professors, to a nice place in the Italian countryside, and for a week the group focuses on a topic - discussing, demonstrating and trying it out. The Vespucci …

Citizen Science Data & Service Infrastructure

Following the ECSA meeting, the Data & tools working group workshop was dedicated to progressing the agenda on data & infrastructure. Jaume Piera (chair, Data and Tools working group of ECSA) covered the area of citizen science data - moving from ideas, to particular solutions, to global proposals - from separate platforms (iNaturalist, iSpot, GBIF, …

Notes from ICCB/ECCB 2015 (Day 2) – Citizen Science data quality

The second day of the ICCB/ECCB 2015 started with a session that focused on the use and interpretation of citizen science data. The  Symposium Citizen Science in Conservation Science: the new paths, from data collection to data interpretation was organised by Karine Princé and included the following talks: Bias, information, signal and noise in citizen science data …

Citizens Observatories: Empowering European Society

A citizens observatory is a concept that evolved at EU policy circles, defining the combination of participatory community monitoring, technology and governance structures that are needed to monitor/observe/manage an environmental issue. About two years ago, the EU FP7 funded 5 citizens observatory projects covering areas from water management to biodiversity monitoring. A meeting at Brussels was …

International Encyclopedia of Geography – Quality Assurance of VGI

The Association of American Geographers is coordinating an effort to create an International Encyclopedia of Geography. Plans started in 2010, with an aim to see the 15 volumes project published in 2015 or 2016. Interestingly, this shows that publishers and scholars are still seeing the value in creating subject-specific encyclopedias. On the other hand, the weird …

Third day of INSPIRE 2014 – any space for civil society and citizens?

At the last day of INSPIRE conference, I've attended a session about  apps and applications and the final plenary which focused on knowledge based economy and the role of inspire within it. Some notes from the talks including my interpretations and comments. Dabbie Wilson from the Ordnance Survey highlighted the issues that the OS is facing …

Assertions on crowdsourced geographic information & citizen science #2

Following the last post, which focused on an assertion about crowdsourced geographic information and citizen science I continue with another observation. As was noted in the previous post, these can be treated as 'laws' as they seem to emerge as common patterns from multiple projects in different areas of activity - from citizen science to crowdsourced …

Citizen or Civic Science, activism and NIMBY

Recently, I attended a meeting with people from a community that is concerned with vibration and noise caused by a railway near their homes. We have discussed the potential of using citizen science to measure the vibrations that pass the sensory threshold and that people classify as unpleasant, together with other perceptions and feeling about …