Citizen Science and Volunteered Geographic Information
Last updated
Last updated
The term Citizen Science was first reported in Wikipedia in 2005 and entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2014 as: “scientific work undertaken by members of the general public, often in collaboration with or under the direction of professional scientists and scientific institutions”.
It emerged as a concept in the mid-1990s as a response to several factors, including the increasing availability of technology and the growing interest among the public in participating in scientific research.
There were also concerns among scientists that the sheer scale of some research projects, particularly in fields such as ecology and environmental science, made it difficult for individual researchers or small teams to collect enough data to draw meaningful conclusions. By involving members of the public in the research process, citizen science projects collect much larger datasets, often covering larger geographic areas, than would be possible with traditional research methods.
The citizen science projects can be distinguished into three different classes:
Long-running citizen science, which are the traditional ones, the projects similar to those run in the past, like birdwatching;
Citizen cyberscience, connected with the use of technologies and can be subclassified in:
Volunteer computing: citizens offer the unused computing resources of their computers;
Volunteer thinking: citizens offer their cognitive abilities for performing tasks difficult for machines;
Passive sensing: citizens use the sensors integrated into mobile computing devices to carry out automatic sensing tasks.
Community science (Fig. 1) involves a more significant commitment of citizens also in designing and planning the project activities in a more egalitarian (if not bottom-up) approach between scientists and citizen scientists, which can be divided into:
Participatory sensing, where citizens use the sensors integrated into mobile computing devices to carry out sensing tasks;
Do It Yourself (DIY) science, which implies participants create their scientific tools and methodology to carry out their research;
Civic science, “which is explicitly linked to community goals and questions the state of things”.
Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) refers to the geographical data that is created and contributed voluntarily by individuals or groups of people. This can include data such as location-based social media posts, GPS traces, photographs with geotags, and other forms of digital content that have a location component.
VGI is often collected and shared using web-based platforms, such as OpenStreetMap, which allow users to create, edit, and share geographic information in a collaborative and decentralized way. This can help to fill gaps in official geographic data, as well as provide more detailed and up-to-date information on specific areas or features.
VGI has a wide range of applications, including urban planning, disaster response, environmental monitoring, and cultural heritage preservation. For example, in disaster response, VGI can help to provide real-time information on the location and extent of damage, as well as on the needs and priorities of affected communities.
Overall, VGI is a powerful tool for enabling citizen engagement in the creation and sharing of geographic data and has the potential to enhance our understanding of the world around us.
