WeObserve actively exchanges ideas, co-creates knowledge and advances practices together with a number of initiatives,

thematically because of a common focus on citizen science and Citizen Observatories

and/or because of a shared way of approaching knowledge consolidation via Communities of Practice.

Citizen Science and Open Science Community of Practice

The Citizen Science and Open Science Community of Practice (CS & OS CoP) has been established under the umbrella of the Citizen Science Global Partnership (CSGP) and is dedicated to stimulating exchange and cooperation between practitioners from the fields of Citizen Science. The co-design process for setting up this CoP is modeled after the WeObserve CoPs, in order to consolidate practice-based expertise at the intersection of Citizen Science and Open Science.

COs4Cloud

COs4Cloud is a de-facto Community of Practice of Citizen Observatories in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). COs4Cloud co-designs, prototypes and implements services that address the technological challenges shared by Citizen Observatories of biodiversity, based on the experience of platforms like: Artportalen, Natusfera, iSpot, Pl@ntNet as well as other environmental quality monitoring platforms like: FreshWater Watch, KdUINO, OdourCollect, iSpex and CanAir.io. The design of new services is user-oriented, engaging a wide range of stakeholders in society, government, industry, academia, agencies, and research to co-design service requirements.

OGC CitSci DWG

The Open Geospatial Consortium Citizen Science Domain Working Group (OGC CitSci DWG) is a group that regularly addresses CS interoperability issues in the OGC members meetings. The DWG addresses citizen science relevant aspects of interoperability chartered by the data life cycle:

  • Data acquisition (how devices send data to repositories);
  • Data storage and dissemination (how repositories make data discoverable and available);
  • Data curation and preservation (how the data is maintained in particular in the long term when the actual data campaign is finished).

In the future, the DWG will also address additional aspects of interoperability that affects all stages of the data life cycle, including privacy, security, trust as well as quality and semantics. The WeObserve CoP-Interoperability conducted an interoperability experiment called Citizen Science Interoperability Experiment (CitSciIE), which is promoted and endorsed by the OGC Citizen Science Domain Working Group.