The growth of citizen science is a global phenomenon. In the United States, the scientific impacts of citizen science are recognized by 60 federal agencies and organizations, which coordinate and support hundreds of citizen science projects. In Europe, the European Commission continues to fund Citizen Observatories, beginning with the FP7 Programme and extending through active projects Ground Truth 2.0, LandSense, SCENT, and GROW. Similar initiatives are emerging in other parts of the world. 

GEO can benefit from these initiatives if standards and best practices in managing (collection, representation, annotation, processing) crowd-sourced data are promoted. There is a need to explore the linkages of citizen data to the GEOSS and its common infrastructure (GCI), identify activities necessary for scaling up (examples are GBIF contributions, Mosquito Alert-UN...), and investigate methods and tools to integrate citizens-generated data with authoritative ones. This should be done in coordination with other GEO initiatives such as GEOBON. In this meeting, we will know more about existing citizen science projects and observatories and will discuss evolving standards and best practices for citizen-observed data management and ways to integrate citizen-acquired with established data sources. We will conclude by articulating next steps to advance the objectives of the GEO work programme.

Agenda

13:00 pm  Welcome Remarks
13:15 pm  Citizen Science Observatories: Lightning Talks
14:15 pm  Tools, Best Practices, and Standards for Utilizing Citizen Science for GEOSS
16:15 pm  Prioritization of Citizen Science as GEO activity
17:00 pm  Closing Remarks and Next Steps
17:30 pm  Adjourn

Contact Information

Registration for all GEO Side events is mandatory. Individuals interested in attending should register here.

For questions about the event, please contact either Dr. Anne Bowser or Krystal Wilson.

Dr. Anne Bowser, Senior Program Associate for the Science and Technology Innovation Program at the Wilson Center, anne.bowser@wilsoncenter.org

Krystal Wilson, Secure World Fund (SWF) Project Manager,  kwilson@swfound.org

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