Citizen Science 2015 (second day)
After a very full first day, the second day opened with a breakfast that provided opportunity to meet the board of the Citizen Science Association (CSA), and to have a nice way to talk with people who got up early (starting at 7am) for another full day of citizen science. Around the breakfast tables, new connections were emerging. 
5A Symposium: Linking Citizen Science and Indigenous Knowledge: an avenue to sustainable development
The session explored the use of different data collection tools to capture and share traditional knowledge. Dawn Wright, ESRI chief scientist started with Emerging Citizen Science Initiatives at Esri. Dawn started with Esri view of science – beyond fundamental science understanding, it is important to see science as protecting life, enabling stewardship and to share information about how the Earth works, how it should look (geodesign) and how we should look at the Earth. As we capture the data with various mobile devices – from mobile phones to watches and sensors we are becoming more geoaware and geoenabled. The area of geotechnologies that enable it – are apps and abilities such as storytelling are very valuable. Esri views geoliteracy as combination of understanding geography and scientific data – issues are more compelling when they are mapped and visualised. The Collector for ArcGIS provide the ability to collect data in the field, and it has been used by scouts as well as in Malawi where it is used by indigenous farmers to help in managing local agriculture. There are also abilities to collect information in the browser with ‘GeoForm’ that support such data collection. Maps were used to collect information about street light coverage and buffering the range that is covered. A third method is a StoryMaps.arcgis.com that allow to tell information with a narrative. Snap2Map is an app that allow to link data collection and put it directly to story-maps. There is also a crowdsource.storymaps.arcgis.com that allow collection of information directly from the browser.
Michalis Vitos, UCL – Sapelli, a data collection platform for non-literate, citizen-scientists in the rainforest. Michalis described the Extreme Citizen Science group – with the aim to provide tools for communities all over the world. In the Congo-basin communities face challenges from illegal logging and poaching , but forest people have direct competition for resources such as the trees that they use, and with the FLEGT obligations in the Republic of Congo, some protection is emerging. The team collaborate with a local NGOs – but still facing challenges including literacy, energy, communication etc. Sapelli collector is an application work with different levels that allow the data collection area. The Sapelli launcher locks the interface of the phone, and allow specific functions to be exposed to the user. The issue of connectivity was address in communication procedures that use SMS. The issue of providing electricity can be done in different ways – including while cooking. There is a procedure of engaging with the community – starting with Free and Prior Informed Consent, and the process start with icons, using them in printed form and make sure that the icons are understood – after the agreement on the icons, there is an introduction to the smartphones – how to touch, how to tap and the rest of the basics. The next stage is to try it is the field. Sapelli is now available in Google Play – the next stage is to ensure that we can show the participants what they collected, but we didn’t managed to find satellite images, so experimentation with drone imagery and mapping to provide the information back to the community. In terms of the results to the community, the project is moving from development to deployment with a logging company. The development of the icons is based on working with anthropologists who discuss the issues with the community and lead the development of the icons. Not all the icons work and sometime need to change. The process involved compensating the community for the time and effort that they put in.
Sam Sudar, University of Washington – Collecting data with Open-Data-Kit (ODK) – Sam gave a background on the tool – the current version and the coming ODK 2.0. ODK is information management tools for collecting and storing data and making it usable, targeted at resource-constrained environment – anywhere where there is limited connectivity, without assuming smartphone literacy. It is used all over the world. It is being used in Kenya, and by JGI in Tanzania, the Surui tribe use it in Brazil to gain carbon credit, and the Carter Center in Egypt for election monitoring, WWF in Rwanda. The technology is used in very diverse way. Need to consider how technology empowers data collection. The ODK workflow is first, build the form, the collect the data, and finally aggregate the results. ODK build / ODK XLSform is the way to build it in Excel, then there is ODK collect to render the forms, and finally ODK aggregate can run locally or on Google App Engine. There is a strong community around ODK with much support for it. In ODK 1.0 there is no data update on the mobile device, as it replicated the paper process. There is limitation for customisation of the interface, or linking to sensors. ODK 2.0 can provide better abilities and it allow syncing of information even it is done on the cloud. The ODK survey replacing ODK collect, and the ODK tables is a way to interact with data on the device. The intention is to make it possible to interact with the data in an easier way.
Do local communities worries about the data collected about them? ODK work with a lot of medical information, but the team doesn’t goes on the ground. Michalis noted that there are not only problems with external body, but also cultural sensitivity about what data should be seen by whom, and there is an effort to develop tools that are responsive to it.
Tanya Birch, Google Earth – Outreach Community-based field data collection and Google mapping tools the video include Jane Goodall work in Tanzania with Chimpanzee, due to habitat lost, there are less than 300,000 chimpanzee left in the wild. Lillian Pintea noted the importance of satellite images that demonstrate all the bare hills in the area of Tanzania. That lead to improve the life of the local villagers so they become partners in conservation. The local communities are essential – they share the status of the work with the people in the village. The forest monitor role is to work across the area, collect data and monitor it to ensure that they can collected data with ODK. Location information is easier in tablet and then upload it to Google, and then it is shared with global effort to monitor forests. Gombe is the laboratory for scaling up across the area of habitat of Chimpanzees and using Google reach to share it widely.
How you have used the tools with youth or challenges of working with young people. The engagement with youth, the term digital native is true and they end teaching the teachers on how to improve the apps. The presentations discussed the simplicity in technology so you don’t need to know what is going on in the background. Another question is people want to change the scale of analysis – standing in the point and taking a picture of a mountain, and how to address different scales. The map as part of the collection tool allow people to see it as they collect the data and for example allow them to indicate the scale of what they viewed. There is also the option in Sapelli to measure scale in football pitches, and in CyberTracker, there is an option to indicate that the information was collected in a different place to where the observer is. Data sharing is something that is important, but make sure that it can be exported in something as simple as
6E Symposium: Human-Centred Technologies for Citizen Science
Kevin Crowston, Syracuse U., & Andrea Wiggins, U. Maryland (symposium convener): Project diversity and design implications most attention is on small projects, and by asking a wider range of projects they discover different practices, the design implication is to understand what the goal of the project, the participation activities – from science, conservation, to photography – there are different things that people are doing, observations is the most common type of contribution (see First Monday paper). Data quality come up in all the projects and there are different strategies. There are diversities of engagement – from conference to social media. Rewards for participation – some projects are not doing rewards: one volunteer appreciation, training , equipment and another one is competitive one. There are also socialisation – and even formal education. Funding – diverse, from grants, private contributions, to sponsorship and sustainability is an issue.
Mobile and Social Technologies
-Anne Bowser, U. Maryland: Gamifying phenology with Floracaching app – geocaching for plants – they are looking data on phenology and earlier version was developed for Bud Burst. Traditional volunteers focus contribution to science, while millennials might be interested in mobile app that is based on games. Embedded maps can be used to crease a cache and there is a leaderboard and points. Floracaching was created from paper prototyping and focus groups. They found perception of gamification was important to millennials, they also enjoyed competition. Also wanted to be told what to do and feedback on how they’ve done. ‘I’m not going to drive an hour to see a plant bloom’ . Missions can be added to the design and help people to learn the application and the data collection.
-Michalis Vitos, U. College London: Sapelli, a mobile data collection platform for non-literate indigenous communities, Michalis covered Sapelli, and the importance of the interface design (see previous session). The design of the icons is being discussed with, effectively, paper prototyping
-Muki Haklay, U. College London: Geographical human-computer interaction for citizen science apps (I’ll blog it later!)
-MattGermonprez, Alan Kolok, U. Nebraska Omaha, & Matt Levy, San Francisco State U.: Enacting citizen science through social media Matt come from a technology angle – he suggested that social media is providing different form of information, and social media – can it be integrated into a citizen science projects. The science project is to monitor Atrazine which started in 2012, with a litmus test, the project worked, but they wanted to use social media in the social setting that they work. Facebook wasn’t used beyond the information, but Twitter and Instagram was used to report observations publicly. The problems – no social conversations, so the next stage they want to maintain social conversation as the next goal Lil’ Miss Atrazine project.
Developing Infrastructures
-Jen Hammock, Smithsonian Institution: An infrastructure for data distribution and use, the aim of the project of looking at snails – findability problem, a tool that they want to develop is for data search – so following different sources for information, and merging the taxa, location, and providing alerts about interests. Notification will be provided to the researcher and to the contributor. There can be knowledge about the person that contribute the information. There are technical and social barriers – will researchers and experienced naturalists be interested in sharing information.
-Yurong He, U. Maryland: Improving biodiversity data sharing among diverse communities. looking at biodiversity – and the encyclopaedia of life. There are content partners who provide the data. She looked at 259 content partners and found 6 types of data providers – and they are professional organisations that operate over time such as IUCN, NHM etc. The second type is repositories, professional database emerge in the 1990s. There are citizen science intiative and communities of interest, such as Xeno-Canto for bird song. Fourth are social media platforms such as wikipedia, Fifth are education communities who add information while they focus on education and finally subsidiaries. We need to know the practices of the provide to support sharing.
-S. Andrew Sheppard, U. Minnesota & Houston Engineering, Inc.: Facilitating scalability and standardization. Andrew talked about the wq framework. He focused on collection, storage and exchange. Standards are making possible to make projects work together, there are devices, field notes, computers, phones – but challenging to coordinate. Web browsers are based on standards are making it possible to work across platforms. Javascript is also supported across platforms. The wq.app provide the ability to collect information. The exchange require sharing data from different sources, Need to build the software to adapt to standards – wq.io is a platform to allow the creation of multiple links. Use standards, HTML5 and build adaptable tools for data exchange
-Stuart Lynn, Adler Planetarium & Zooniverse: Developing tools for the next scientific data deluge. Stuart discussed about their online community. They have 1.2 m users. The challenge in the future is that there are going to be many projects and data sources that give huge amount of data. The aim is to partner with machine learning algorithm but how to keep the crowd interested and not just give the most difficult cases with no opportunity to learn or progress slowly. Gamification can be stressful, so they try to give more information and learning. They also try to create a community and discuss the issues. There is huge distribution of comments – and deepening engagement. There is no one size fits all and we need to model and understand them better.
Contributors and Communities
-Jenny Preece, U. Maryland: Motivating and demotivating factors for long-term participation – what motivate people to come back again and again. The different motivational aspects -describing the work of the late Dana Rotman collect info in the US, India and Costa Rica. 142 surveys from the us, 156 from India and also interviews in the three countries. She used grounded theory approach. She developed a framework initial, and for long term impact there are internal and external motivation. Demotivations – time, problems with technology, long commitment with the task.
-Carsten Oesterlund, Gabriel Mugar, & Kevin Crowston, Syracuse U.: Technology features and participant motivations, the snowflakes of participants – how might we approach them? people change over time? looking at zooniverse – specifically planet hunters, there are annotations, talk and other sources of information. The talk pages – new comers and encouraged to annotate and comment about the image and also looking at what other people have done. They also find people that are more experienced. Use of talk change over time, people start putting in comments, then they go down and stop commenting and then later on started putting more information. There is also role discovery in terms of engagement and what they do in their community.
-Charlene Jennet, U. College London: Identifying and promoting creativity – creativity is a puzzling question, which is debated in psychology with some people look for breakthrough moment, while other look at everyday creativity. There are examples of projects that led to creativity – such as foldit? in terms of everyday creativity in citizen cyberscience and conducting interviews with volunteers and results include artwork from the old weather forum or the Galaxy Zoo Peas and eyewire chatbots that were created for members. People who are engaged in the project are contributing more to the project. Providing feedback on progress is important, and alos regular communication and personal feedback in blogs and answering in tweeters. Event help and also need to have ability role management
-Carl Lagoze, U. Michigan: Inferring participant expertise and data quality – focusing on eBird and there is a paper in big data and society. The standard way is to control the provenance of the data. The library is creating ‘porous zone’ so today there is less control over the who area. There are barriers that break down between novices and experts. How can we tell experts/non experts – this happen across areas, and it is sort of distributed sensor network with weak sensors. are there signal in the data that help you to identify people and the quality of their information.
7C Panel: Citizen Science and Disasters: The Case of OpenStreetMap –
Robert Soden (University of Colorado, Boulder) described the GFDRR project of Open Cities to collect data for resilience planning and explained the reasons to select OpenStreetMap to use for it. Kathmandu is recognised as at risk place, and there was an aim to identify schools that are at risk, but there was a need to do the basic mapping. There was a local partnership with universities in the area. There was a challenge of figuring out data model – number of stories, usage, roof type, wall type, age. There was a need to make students to collect information that will help in modelling the risk. They produced a lot of training material. The project was successful in collecting the data and enriching the information. The process helped in creating an OpenStreetMap community out of it, and then they launched a local NGO (Kathmandu Living Labs). Trust in the data was important and there was a risk of discrediting the data – to deal with that, they involved targeted users early as well as spot check the data and done a fuller assessment of the data. They launching similar projects in Jamaica. Vietnam and Madagascar. They want to engage people in more than just data collection, and how they can be support to grow the community
Mikel Maron (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team) Mikel covered what is OpenStreetMap (OSM), the OSM foundation is a different entity than Wikimedia, which is confusing. OSM are a very wide community of many thousands of people that continue to contribute. Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (H.O.T) is following the ‘Cute Cat theory for humanitarian maps’ – use something that is alive and people are used to contribute to, when you need it in emergency situations. OSM is used in many organisation and projects in government. Attempts to map all these organisations is challenging. In Bangladesh, there are 6 OSM projects and require cooperation between agencies – at least all projects contribute to the same database. Organisations find it challenging that they need to support but can’t control. Starting from Gaza in 2009, OSM community started to map the area although there was no specific request. OSM was eventually used to create local tourist map. The community in Gaza didn’t continue – providing long term support is difficult.Haiti 2010 helped in producing the data and it was difficult to coordinate, so that led to the tasking manager. MapGive is providing support through imagery to the crowd – a way to support OSM by utilising the DigitalGlobe database. There are development of linking OSM and citizen science. There is very rich data in OSM and there is need to understand social science and data research.
8E Symposium: Ethical Dimensions of Citizen Science Research
Caren Cooper opened with a list of issues: participation vs exploitation; beneficence, maleficence, autonomy and justice; incentives vs manipulation; IP and data ownership; data misuse, sharing accessiblity; opennes vs privacy and secury; cultural competence. 
Holly Menninger led yourwildlife.org – the project that she focusing on – home microbiom at home. Asking dust samples from home that volunteers share and they look at the content. Volunteers want to understand their home but also the science. There was the issue of reporting back to participants – They want to understand the information, and they provided some information and it was a challenge to translate the scientific information into something useful. People are interested in the information at home, sometime due to personal issues – e.g. request to get the results because someone is ill in the house. There is a lag of 2 years between samples and results, and it need to be explained to the participants. There is also an issue that the science is exploratory, which mean that there are no specific answers that can be answered for participants.
Madhusudan Katti explored the appropriation of citizens knowledge. In the realm of IP in traditional knowledge is discussed a lot. Appropriating local knowledge and then publishing when the information came from local knowledge through interviews – but the scientists get the fame. Collecting information about engendered species where there is risk from local community. he mentioned the film Living with elephants which focus on the conflicts between humans and elephants but that also might help poachers.
Janet Stemwedel highlighted that even participant-led citizen science can be helped with DIY science. DIY science it is self efficacy, and control the process, so if the participants running the show, than what can go wrong? Who better to protect my autonomy than me? The answer that autonomy is tricky and need good information about potential risks and benefits and your current choices can hurt future prospects for choosing freely (don’t use autonomy to get addicted, or what you do with your personal information), finally our exercise of autonomy can impact others’ prospects of free choice (DNA analysis have an impact on your wider family). IRB is a mechanism to think it through – potential consequence (good and bad), who could be impacted? strategies for answering the question. Reasons to resist IRB – not legally required, and the academic scientists complain about it, as well as no access to an IRB.
The reason to get over the resistance is that unintentional harm is not a good thing, also to get feedback from more eyes helped to know about tools and approach. Ethical objectivity is to go beyond just gut feeling and discuss with other people.
Anne Bowser discussed the ethics of gamification – the use of game design elements in non-game contexts (using leader boards). Old weather had an element of games, and also the floracaching as an example. There is labour/exploitation two – in games such as Civilization II is done for fun, while you learn about history. Online games are using different approaches to extract more from their users. Does contribution to science cleanse the ethical issues because it’s not for motives? crowdsourcing was critique in different ways. There are also tracking and privacy, so it also provide habits and all sort of details about the users (e.g. in foursquare) – salesforce is getting badges to encourage people to act in specific ways as employers. Ethical citizen science: treat participants as collaborators; don’t waste volunteer time; volunteers are not computers (Prestopnik & Cowston 2012). Ethical design allow participants to be aware of the implication and decide if they want gamification or not.
Lea Shanley – covering data privacy – it came from working with Native American tribes, with participatory mapping. Tribe started to use participatory GIS. There were many things they wanted to map – and the information had difference in views about sharing the data or not. Some places were careful and some was not. In disaster response, there is all the social media curation, and many people that are open data evangelist and they started sharing location of first aiders location and actually risking them. In citizen science, there is lack of attention to location – places were they recorded, and even real time information that risk physical security of participants. Face recognition is possible. Information collected by volunteer can reveal medical information that can harm people prospects. sensitive information, sacred sites location, endangered species. Toxic environments can risk volunteers. There are also issues with who interpret and manage the data. social norms and reinforcing social norms. An emerging area is security of social media – crowdsourcing teams where hacked in DARPA red balloon challenge. There can be issues with deliberate hacking to citizen science from people who don’t like it.
Dianne Quigley – northeast ethics education partnership, that came from issues of environmental and social justice to improve ethical knowledge of researchers. When researchers start with a community they start with discussion of risk/benefits and consider who is getting something out of it. Training graduate students to know how to work with communities. avoid harming – non-maleficence; also informed consent of working with communities, protecting data; justice is a way to think of linguistic diversity, respect to local knowledge, and also recruitment in a fair way in terms of representation. Data management and protocols. There is a need to learn humility – to respect the needs and practices of the community.
There are ideas to start an ethics group in the CSA and consider code of ethics or participant bill of rights? do we need to extend IRB oversight? co-created common rule? is there a value in code of ethics or will it be a dead word? The discussion explored the need bottom up projects which also need to consider the impacts and outputs, communication with the public and promising what the research will deliver, and the investment of time in citizen science by early career researchers can also impact their career prospect. These are challenges that are common in community participatory research.
The panel is specifically reflecting on the citizenship aspects of citizen science. Citizen science is a significant phenomena, and feeling that need a critical voice within it. What is the place of the citizen in citizen science? question about governance, methodologies practices and methodologies. How does it connect to wider democratisation of knowledge?
Eugenia Rodrigues (University of Edinburgh, UK) noted that what model of citizenship it promotes? one way is to look at the demographics, but we can ask about the term – possible to use volunteer, amateur, or extended peer review. Citizen include autonomy, creativity, liberty , responsibility, having a stake etc. What are the citizens doing and are we constructing a story that recognises the citizen scientists as a citizen? The story that is appearing in work in North-east of England dealing with water pollution in local woodland, where they noted that the EA was not doing things satisfactory way, so their need of their local habitat was overlooked. In this case we have contextual/experiential knowledge and expert monitoring skills to lead to a change. Citizen science can be seen as counter expertise. We need to include – some classification are trying to control the role of the citizens, the need to control levels of participation to improve quality, do not give space for participants to exercise their citizenship fully.
Shannon Dosemagen (Public Lab) – in public lab there are specific attention to environmental monitoring and there is a need to re-imagine the role. In public lab they prefer to use civic science or community science and not citizen science because it can be controversial or different in different places. They also think of scientists and non-scientists not in a supplicant way. Consider how engage people in the whole process. Different roles play out in different ways – they want to be active about it. There are different roles within the community of public lab but it is about egalitarian approach to roles?
Esther Turnhout (Wageningen University) looking at expertise and quality control in citizen science networks for biodiversity knowledge. Biodiversity knowledge is existing in amateur naturalists and they started using the term citizen science. To conceptualise – there are complex relationships with mainstream science. Biodiversity recording been around for a long time and the data is increasing demand for decision making. What it brought with it is demand to professionalise and increase standards and quality. The validation is the complex networks of amateurs, experts, professionals and decision makers – looking at actors in the network. Validation is done in different places with different motivations – there are hierarchical network inside the naturalists groups and enforcing them with novices. The digitise data is compared with existing observation and there is reciprocity between observer and the process of collecting and organise the data. There are lots of things – butterflies, community of observers, the field guide – the process is circular. But increasingly, validation is imposed and procedural. Validation seizes to be collective and the records no longer circulate. The main concern is to keep check where the data go and belong to the observer. The citizenship dependent on not just turning the data into probabilities. There is a need to maintain control over the data.
Rick Hall (Ignite!, UK) there been different learned societies around the country – the learned societies that emerged from the 18th century, the acts of enclosures and the workhouses enslaved large groups in society. Today, we can ask about Internet barons if they are trying to do the same as mill owners. There is a cultural entitlement in the human right declaration. The current president of the Royal Society – finding things for yourself is at the very heart of science. It matter where it takes place – for example in a popup shop that allows community curiosity labs and explore questions that matter to them. Spaces in schools that young people can take ownership over their investigations. In spaces like Lab_13 are spaces to learn how to become a scientist. The issues are asking young people what people want to know know. We need spaces where citizens learn not just science but how to become scientists… We need more community and civic citizen scientists because the world need more curios minds.
Erinma Ochu (University of Manchester, UK)- as a neuroscientist she found her research that it requires empathy and stories as a way the science evolved as powerful and controlling. What happen when you bring science to the public realm? How to ensure that it is inclusive for women and minorities?
For me, the discussion highlighted that it was mostly about collective action (which Katrin V is in the citizen concept) and egalitarianism in the production of knowledge -so expertise without hierarchy.
another observer raised the issue of democratisation and what notion of political actions we would like to see within citizen science
The final keynote was from Amy Robinson EyeWire: Why Do Gamers Enjoy Mapping the Brain? demonstrating the game and how it works. Lessons from EyeWire – it’s been running for 2 years and a lot of things that were learned. The idea: if we build it, they will play – that’s not happen. Actually, carefully crafted, slowly built community – creating the tools, learning about how things are used. Media is crucial – 60% of eyewire registration came within 5 days of major media event. Major media event is in facebook, twitter and other social media – suddenly things are coming from media. Facebook page can convert viewers to participants. Media relations are an active engagement, not just waiting for journalist – share all sort of things, and funny things. Reaching out to media also require being prepared to it – and you need to cope with it and capture it. Create internal analytics to understand how the project works. Engagement is also a major issue – there is a huge drop off after two months. By creating games and missions can provide a reason to capture people’s interest. Prestige within the community can work to motivate them – changing the user handle colour can demonstrate the recognition by the project. There are also specific challenges and set their own challenges. Accuracy and efficiency – using the power players in the game to have a bigger role in the project. How do you recognise a potential power players in your game? Design of the entry page is critical – the page is minimalist and reduce the amount of information that you need to enter the system. They have created all sort of interesting collaboration such as fascinating visualisations. There is also need to take risks and see if they are going to work or not.
Abe Miller-Rushing close the conference asking people to share talks and links, as well as posters will come online. We are aiming to create a community and serve the needs. The new board chair, Greg Newman continue with some take aways from the conference which completed the conference. Another blog post from the conference is https://wildlifesnpits.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/power-of-the-people-thoughts-from-the-first-citizen-science-association-conference/
