Harnessing Citizen Science at the National-Level
By Steph Pietras and Alyson Marks
With the limitations of in-person engagement as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, TReNDS launched several member sub-groups related to key challenges within the data ecosystem for members to discuss, debate, and work towards developing solutions. This blog is part of a series that details the issues that the sub-groups are exploring.
Source: Photo by Nature
While it may serve as a surprise to some, citizen science has been around for thousands of years. Some of the earliest documented projects involved public campaigns to record animal sightings, including tracking locust outbreaks in ancient China and bird counts during the early twentieth century. With the influx of new technologies in recent years, such as mobile applications and remote sensing, citizen science has grown in popularity as researchers, governments, and citizens are now able to more seamlessly collaborate. In particular, citizen science has become a critical tool for helping to measure progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as fill data gaps.
TReNDS’ expert members’ research, work at the country-level, as well as recent discussions on citizen science have helped to highlight the use of citizen science to fill important data gaps, the value of multistakeholder partnerships to mobilize citizen science initiatives at the local level, as well as the importance of garnering national buy-in.
Emerging Lessons
Reinventing the Wheel Isn’t Always Necessary
When embarking on using citizen generated data for SDG monitoring, countries don’t necessarily have to start from scratch. Rachel Bowers, an ODI Fellow at the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), underscored this point when discussing a TReNDS-supported project to use citizen science to monitor marine litter in Ghana during a recent World Data Forum session. She explained, “Using existing networks and an off the shelf method required fewer resources and enabled the reuse of historical data. Additionally, government agencies like the GSS and the Ghana EPA could focus more on processing and validating the data instead of the collection and the design. Leveraging existing networks [like partnering with Smart Nature Freak Youth Volunteers who were already an established local network involved in beach cleanup] also meant that there were already citizens who were involved and committed to the movement, and it didn’t require additional effort in activation.”
By harnessing existing networks and initiatives already taking place in the country and mobilizing a whole range of partners across government, civil society, and academia, it facilitated a more seamless alignment of methodologies and fostered more efficient data collection.
The Importance of Local Stewardship and Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration
One of the main challenges associated with citizen science projects for SDG monitoring has been garnering national buy-in and assuring that the data meets the appropriate quality standards. However, working with local stakeholders and community leaders and encouraging multi-stakeholder collaboration has been helpful to address these issues and build trust within government for these projects. As Albert van Jaarsveld, Director General of IIASA highlighted during a recent World Data Forum session, “Top-down support is very welcome. [But] at the same time we need community leaders to take the lead and help us move [these projects] forward.”
Moreover, co-collaboration is often baked into citizen science initiatives. “Citizen science initiatives are profoundly collaborative when crafting and executing strategies for monitoring, planning, and decision-making. This co-creation approach helps to build trust and legitimacy in government institutions,” explained TReNDS’ Director, Grant Cameron. Additionally, citizen science projects are more likely to succeed if countries, like in the cases of Ghana and Kenya (whose National Statistics Offices have become stewards of citizen generated data), are already invested in and believe in the value of citizen generated data for SDG monitoring.
Citizen Science Can be Combined with a Range of New Data Sources, but More Use Cases are Needed
As new sources of data become more widely available, the opportunities for integration with citizen science data have burgeoned. In particular, combining Earth Observation (EO) data with citizen science has the potential to result in more efficient data for SDG monitoring. TReNDS’ expert member, Dilek Fraisl, explains that recent research has demonstrated that “citizen science can complement Earth Observation data in many different ways, including providing depth and nuance…there is great potential for complementarity between these two data sources.”
Examples of recent projects that have worked to combine EO data and citizen science include a forest biomass analysis pilot project in the state of Durango, Mexico where local volunteers take forest inventory using mobile devices and the collected data is combined with remote sensing data to derive a forest biomass map of the area. Additionally, Picture Pile is a web-based and mobile application citizen science tool that can be used to collect data for the development and validation of remotely sensed map products and to provide new inputs to machine learning algorithms. The application uses imagery from satellites, orthophotos, unmanned aerial vehicles, or geotagged photographs that can be rapidly classified by volunteers. And the results of a recent journal article by Fraisl and others demonstrate that the tool could contribute to the monitoring of at least 15 SDG indicators. However, to realize the full potential of the application, more use cases are needed. To help fix this issue, our members’ sub-group on citizen science is working with the EO4SDG community to develop an SDG toolkit that will combine EO and citizen science data and highlight potential innovations for combining EO with citizen science data.
Looking Ahead
It’s clear that citizen science will continue to play an increasingly important role in helping to measure and monitor the SDGs both at the national and global levels. However, use cases that demonstrate the potential of citizen science (particularly combined with nontraditional sources of data, such as EO data) to monitor the SDGs are still lacking. Fortunately, TReNDS’ citizen science working group and broad initiatives, like the Global Citizen Science Partnership (GCSP), are working to address this need so that the global data and statistics communities can fully optimize the value of citizen science in the year ahead.