Over the past decade the field of Citizen Science (CS) has progressed significantly through a combination of EU-funded projects, national, regional, and local initiatives, and the use of new digital technologies.
CS, defined by the European Commission as “the voluntary participation of non-professional scientists in research and innovation at different stages of the process and at different levels of engagement, from shaping research agendas and policies, to gathering, processing and analysing data, and assessing the outcomes of research” (EC, 2020), has existed since the early 20th century.
Initially its application was rooted in the natural sciences. In recent years, however, the digital turn (Ash et al., 2018), advancements in information technology (IT), new ways of collecting data such as crowdsourcing, digital sharing, online projects and social networks (Vohland et al., 2021) have enabled the proliferation of CS applications and projects in other fields of study (Hacklay 2015, Hecker et al., 2018) with prominent examples in urban planning (Karvonen & Van Heur 2014), and sustainable urban development (Cappa et al., 2022).
Our changing cities are experimenting with new policies, methodologies, and tools that engage citizens in problem solving, “hackathons” and co-design activities, demonstrating innovative approaches to urban challenges. Current research shows that the direct involvement of citizens in activities of data collection and analysis, and crowdsourced monitoring can generate a powerful tool to fill information gaps, raise social and environmental awareness, enhance public trust in science, and improve the influence of communities on planning activities and policies (Shade 2021). However, CS activities also face challenges related to accessibility, justice, equity, inclusion, etc. (Cooper et al., 2021) and, at the same time, have untapped potential to be explored.
To this end, this session aims to explore and critically examine the role and potential of CS uses in urban environments by addressing aspects such as community engagement; data collection and analysis; evidence-based policy development; crowdsourced monitoring; co-design, co-creation, collaboration and partnerships; local knowledge; public awareness and advocacy; and inclusivity and diversity.
References
Ash, J., Kitchin, R., & Leszczynski, A. (2018), Digital turn, digital geographies? Progress in Human Geography, 42, 25 –43.
Cappa, F., Franco, S., & Rosso, F. (2022), Citizens and cities: Leveraging citizen science and big data for sustainable urban development. Business strategy and environment, 31, 599-683.
Cooper, C. B., Hawn, C. L., Larson, L. R., Parrish, J. K., Bowser, J., Cavalier, D., Dunn, R. R., Haklay, M., Gupta, K. K., Jelks, N. O., Johnson, V. A., Katti, M., Leggett, Z., Wilson, O. R., & Wilson, S. (2021), Inclusion in citizen science: The conundrum of rebranding. Science, 372, 1386–1388.
European Commission (2020), Citizen Science – Elevating research and innovation through societal engagement, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, Publications Office of the European Union, available at https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2777/624713
Hacklay M. (2015), Citizen Science and Policy: A European Perspective. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Hecker, S., Garbe, L., & Bonn, A. (2018), The European citizen science landscape—a snapshot. In S. Hecker, M. Haklay, A. Bowser, Z. Makuch, J. Vogel & A. Bonn (eds). Citizen science. Innovation in open science, society and policy (pp. 190–200) UCLPress.
Karvonen, A., & Van Heur, B. (2014), Urban laboratories: Experiments in reworking cities. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38, 379–392.
Schade, S., Pelacho, M., van Noordwijk, T., Vohland ,K., Hecker ,S. & Manzoni, M. (2021), Citizen Science and Policy. In: Vohland, K., et al. The Science of Citizen Science. Springer, Cham.
Vohland, K., Land-Zandstra, A., Ceccaroni, L., Lemmens, R., Perelló, J., Ponti, M., Wagenknecht, K. (2021), The science of citizen science. Springer Nature.