The latest outputs from researchers, alumni and friends at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).
So the first day of the Citizen Cyberscience Summit? From James Borrell‘s opening with his lessons from a year of citizen science, to Leo Bottrill who closed the day by discussing the Moabi platform that is being developed for forest communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the issue of ‘inclusiveness‘ appeared throughout the day. […]
The Citizen Cyberscience Summit that will be running in London this week sparked the interest of the producers of BBC World Service ‘Click’ programme, and it was my first experience of visiting BBC Broadcasting House – about 15 minutes walk from UCL. Here is the clip from the programme that covers the discussion about the […]
Following the two previous assertions, namely that: ‘you can be supported by a huge crowd for a very short time, or by few for a long time, but you can’t have a huge crowd all of the time (unless data collection is passive)’ (original post here) And ‘All information sources are heterogeneous, but some are more […]
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 […]
Looking across the range of crowdsourced geographic information activities, some regular patterns are emerging and it might be useful to start notice them as a way to think about what is possible or not possible to do in this area. Since I don’t like the concept of ‘laws’ – as in Tobler’s first law of […]
An interview by Prof Anthony Costello of UCL Institute of Global Health, discussing the growth in citizen science today.
Continue reading »The term ‘Citizen Science’ is clearly gaining more recognition and use. It is now get mentioned in radio and television broadcasts, social media channels as well as conferences and workshops. Some of the clearer signs for the growing attention include discussion of citizen science in policy oriented conferences such as UNESCO’s World Summit on Information Society […]
The UCL Urban Laboratory is a cross-disciplinary initiative that links various research interest in urban issues, from infrastructure to the way they are expressed in art, films and photography. The Urban Laboratory has just published its first Urban Pamphleteer which aim to ‘confront key contemporary urban questions from diverse perspectives. Written in a direct and accessible […]
Earlier this week, I gave a public lecture as part of UCL‘s programme of Lunch Hour Lectures. The talk, which is titled ‘Science for everyone by everyone – the re-emergence of citizen science‘ covered the area of citizen science and explained what we are trying to achieve within the Extreme Citizen Science research group. Because […]
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 […]
The Spatial Data Infrastructure Magazine (SDIMag.com) is a relatively new e-zine dedicated to the development of spatial data infrastructures around the world. Roger Longhorn, the editor of the magazine, conducted an email interview with me, which is now published. In the interview, we are covering the problematic terminology used to describe a wider range of activities; the […]
On 25th September, the UCL iGEM team organised an event that was dedicated to demonstrating their work with the Biohacking enthusiasts at the London Hackspace, on the rights and risks on public participation in developing a biobrick. The event raised some fundamental questions about ethics and limits of citizen science, but first, some […]
On the 4th and 5th August, Portland, OR, was the gathering place for 300 participants that came to the workshop on Public Participation in Scientific Research. The workshop was timed just before the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, and therefore it was not surprising that the workshop focused on citizen science […]
The Guardian Science Weekly podcast is dedicated to Citizen Science – another example of the growing interest in popular media in Citizen Science. However, the podcast conflate cases were non-professional scientists are involved in scientific project (and Chris Lintott discuss Galaxy Zoo, FoldIt and similar projects) with participation in scientific research through surveys. It is […]
Over the Air 2012 event was a wonderful event – it’s a 36 hours event, dedicated to mobile development and it is based on Bletchley park. This year, Citizen Science was a theme of the event. The final talk was given by Francois Grey from the Citizen Cyberscience Centre . Francois’ interest is on volunteer computing […]
The London Citizen Cyberscience Summit ran in the middle of February, from 16th (Thursday) to 18th (Saturday). It marked the launch of the UCL Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) group, while providing an opportunity for people who are interested in different aspects of citizen science to come together, discuss, share ideas, consider joint projects and learn […]
The previous post focused on citizen science as participatory science. This post is discussing the meaning of this differentiation. It is the final part of the chapter that will appear next year in the book: Sui, D.Z., Elwood, S. and M.F. Goodchild (eds.), 2012. Volunteered Geographic Information, Public Participation, and Crowdsourced Production of Geographic Knowledge. […]
This post continues to the theme of the previous one, and is also based on the chapter that will appear next year in the book: Sui, D.Z., Elwood, S. and M.F. Goodchild (eds.), 2012. Volunteered Geographic Information, Public Participation, and Crowdsourced Production of Geographic Knowledge. Berlin: Springer. The post focuses on the participatory aspect of […]
As part of the Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) workshop that was held in Seattle in April 2011, Daniel Sui, Sarah Elwood and Mike Goodchild announced that they will be editing a volume dedicated to the topic, planned to be published at the beginning of next year. My contribution to this volume focuses on citizen science, […]
GIS Research UK (GISRUK) is a long running conference series, and the 2011 instalment was hosted by the University of Portsmouth at the end of April. During the conference, I was asked to give a keynote talk about Participatory GIS. I decided to cover the background of Participatory GIS in the mid-1990s, and the transition […]
Following successful funding for the European Union FP7 EveryAware and the EPSRC Extreme Citizen Science activities, the department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at UCL is inviting applications for a postdoctoral position and 3 PhD studentships. Please note that these positions are open to students from any EU country. These positions are in the […]
Challenging Engineering is an EPSRC programme aimed at supporting individuals in building a research group and to ‘establish themselves as the future leaders of research’. As can be imagined, this is a both prestigious and well-funded programme – it provides enough resources to establish a group, recruit postdoctoral and PhD researchers, visit external laboratories and […]
Geographic and scientific information created by amateur citizens, represents a shift from authoritative data towards information generated by the general public through collaboration. The increasing emergence of such data has been brought about by the advent of Web 2.0 technologies, and mirrors other information sharing activities such as Wikipedia and Flickr. Such activity has also […]
EveryAware is a three-year research project, funded under the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The project’s focus is on the development of Citizen Science techniques to allow people to find out about their local environmental conditions, and then to see if the provision of this information leads to behaviour change. The abstract of the […]