weobserve

INSPIRE Hackathon
2020-03-30 - 2020-06-11
Depsite the COVID-19 pandemic and after approximately 2 months since its initation, the Dubrovnik INSPIRE Hackathon 2020 ”Leveraging interoperable frameworks, artificial intelligence and citizen science for Sustainable Development Goals was successfully concluded, consisting of 12 individual challenges.
One of the key objectives of the hackathon was to promote collaboration and sharing of experience in the domain of spatial data/services and citizen-science while showcasing their utilisation and uptake to different application domains and themes. This includes also supporting the Sustainable Development Goals. WeObserve introduced and facilitated the organisation of three citizen-science challenges that attracted 35 participants coming from different fields of expertise and from 22 different countries all over the world.
On Thursday 11th June, the results from the hackathon challenges were presented during the INSPIRE 2020 Online Conference, showing what the teams have achieved in the weeks of virtual collaboration. This workshop concluded with an announcement of the top three teams in an awards ceremony. One of the citizen-science challenges entitled as “Establish the connection of Citizen Observatories resources with central catalogue” was the winner of the second place!
To find out more about the citizen-science challenges, please visit here.

CODATA Essay competition: Open Data Challenges to Address Glibal and Societal Issues
2020-04-01 - 2020-06-30
AN INVITATION TO TAKE PART IN THE CODATA CONNECT – DATA SCIENCE JOURNAL EARLY CAREER ESSAY COMPETITION

The first of its kind, CODATA Connect Early Career and Alumni Network in collaboration with the CODATA Data Science Journal (DSJ) is organizing an Essay Competition for Early Career Researchers (ECR), defined as university undergraduate, graduate, post-graduate students or early career researchers within five years of completing their highest qualification. CODATA Connect exists to ensure a structural and sustained collaboration and support for the activities of the alumni of CODATA-RDA Summer Schools, of the CODATA China and Trieste Training Workshops and other early career researchers and data professionals involved in the CODATA community and those of partner organisations.
Topic for the Essay: “Open Data Challenges to Address Global and Societal Issues”

Participants interested in disseminating information on research data in the sciences, humanities and the arts using essays as the medium are welcome to apply.
Topics might include but not limited to human health, climate change, resilience, etc.
Essays which discuss the necessary limits in openness are also in scope and are welcome (e.g. personal health information, indigenous sovereignty etc.)
Essays that discuss the challenges in making data as open as possible and how such data can be used to address global and societal issues (Crime, Disease, Governance, etc.)
Essays might discuss challenges at any point in the data lifecycle and in relation to any of a number of global and societal challenges.
We discourage essays that simply present well known and generic arguments in favour of open data.
Essays are encouraged to use local or specific examples for the benefits of open data and to discuss how challenges can be overcome in both specific circumstances and more globally.

To find out more on the criteria, as well as the process to be followed, visit the official website here.

Want to Join the Fight Against COVID-19? Help Scientists With Their Coronavirus Research From Your Home
2020-04-15 15:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Moscow)
Discover and SciStarter are hosting a live, online Citizen Science Month event looking at three COVID-19 research projects that need your help.

On Wednesday, April 15, at 3 p.m. EDT, Discover and SciStarter will host a live-streamed event on Zoom and Facebook to introduce you to three scientists leading COVID-19 citizen science projects that need your help. The event is part of Citizen Science Month.
In the discussion, you’ll learn how to identify behaviors that influence risk; crowdsource the COVID-19 pandemic in real-time; play an online game to fold and design proteins for scientific research.
Anna Funk, associate editor of Discover magazine, will moderate the discussion. We’ll provide step-by-step guides so we can get involved in real-time, online, together. You can create your SciStarter account (free) and get familiar with the three COVID-19 projects before the event by visiting SciStarter.org/COVID-19. You’ll also find the event live at Discover’s Facebook page, facebook.com/DiscoverMag.
Here are the projects that scientists will discuss:
COVID-19 Citizen Science – Take part
Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, hope to enroll 1 million people in “real-time epidemiology” research. This program, called COVID-19 Citizen Science (CCS), starts with an initial 15-minute survey about a volunteer’s health and daily habits. The program will follow up with subsequent questions throughout the study, which will be sent via an app or text message.
Volunteers can even offer up their GPS location and, eventually, highly detailed information like blood pressure, weight, blood oxygen levels, body temperature, exercise and sleep. That information would come through wearable devices like Fitbits.
By tracking a huge number of people over time, the researchers hope to identify factors that change the risk of infection and what happens afterward. The more people get involved, the more statistically significant the results will be.
COVID Near You – Take part
Health officials can’t fight the coronavirus pandemic without knowing where infections are.
Now, researchers have created a way to track people with COVID-19 symptoms, even if they still can’t easily test and diagnose who actually has the disease.
The effort is called COVID Near You. Anyone in the U.S. can use the initiative’s website to self-report their location and how they’re feeling. The researchers work with national and local officials to monitor potential hot spots.
Fight COVID-19 with FoldIt – Take part
You wash your hands thoroughly and stifle your natural hugging urge, but what else can you do to battle COVID-19? Join the FoldIt project!
There, you will play a free online game in which the goal is to design an antiviral protein that targets the dangerous virus.

For more information, visit here.
Find more than 100 online events taking place this month at CitizenScienceMonth.org .

Pan-European Hackathon to develop innovative solutions to overcome societal challenges related to coronavirus
2020-04-24 - 2020-04-26 | Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, European Commission, Brussels, 1049, Belgium
The European Commission and EU member states have today launched a call for participation in a pan-European Hackathon to connect innovators, partners and buyers across Europe to develop innovative solutions to coronavirus-related challenges.
The Hackathon, which will take place on 24, 25 and 26 April, is structured around categories of problems that need short-term solutions in relation to coronavirus health and life, business continuity, remote working and education, social & political cohesion, digital finance and an open category for other challenges. Feel empowered to get creative!
European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel said:
This pan-European hackathon is an example of how Europe can come together in times of crisis. It’s inspiring to witness this show of solidarity by our community of innovators. Our most talented minds will do their best to find solutions to coronavirus and support our citizens. This is European innovation in action.
All 27 EU Member States are taking part as well as Norway, Israel, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. The winning solutions will be invited to join a European Innovation Council Platform that will facilitate connections with end users (e.g. hospitals) and provide access to investors, foundations and other funding opportunities from across the European Commission.
Can you hack it? Register now on the EUvsVirus Hackathon website to be part of the solution!
More information are available here.

COVID Webinar #2: All Hands on Deck! Citizen Science and Serious Games Tackle Covid-19
2020-04-24 08:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Moscow)
The Citizen Science Association Law and Policy Working Group invite you to take part to ‘COVID Webinar #2: All Hands on Deck! Citizen Science and Serious Games Tackle Covid-19’

FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 2020
TIME: 8-9:15 AM PT / 11 AM – 12:15 PM ET / 4-5:15 PM CET
REGISTER HERE: https://bit.ly/CSAcovidGames
Speakers:

EteRNA

Rhiju Das, Associate Professor, Stanford University

Protein-folding citizen scientists tackle Covid-19 with Foldit

Firas Khatib, Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Covid Near You

Kara Seawalk, Boston Children’s Hospital and Covid Near You

COVID.SI: Citizen science project to fight against NCOV-SARS-2 by distributed computing

Črtomir Podlipnik

Safecast and Responding to Covid-19 through crowdsourced data

Angela Eaton, Safecast Americas Director

Follow the conversation on Twitter: @CitSciAssoc and using hashtags #CitSciPolicy and #CitSci

Find below the Presenters’ Bios:
Rhiju Das, Ph.D., is a computational biochemist at Stanford University School of Medicine. His lab seeks a predictive understanding of how RNA molecules code for complex biological machines. The lab’s computer algorithms have consistently achieved leading predictions in world-wide structure prediction trials. Complementary to these computer methods, Dr. Das is developing high-throughput ‘multidimensional chemical mapping’ experiments to uncover three-dimensional structures and conformational changes of non-coding RNAs in their biological milieu, leading to discoveries relevant to human development, neurological disorders, and viral infection. Towards novel molecules of biomedical interest, Dr. Das leads the Eterna massive open laboratory. Eterna couples a 250,000-player videogame to the lab’s massively parallel experimental tools and deep learning, the first such platform in citizen science. Dr. Das’s research has been recognized with the Burroughs-Wellcome Career Award at the Interface of Science, a W.M. Keck Medical Research Program award, the OpenEye/American Chemical Society Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, and an endowed faculty award. Dr. Das mentors students from Stanford’s biochemistry, biophysics, biomedical informatics, chemistry, and learning sciences Ph.D. programs. EteRNA: https://eternagame.org/web/news/9804036/
Firas Khatib, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Computer and Information Science Department at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He received his bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from UC Berkeley in 2001, and his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from UC Santa Cruz in 2008. Prior to joining UMass Dartmouth, he was a Senior Fellow in the Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute at the University of Washington. Firas has been the lead scientist of Foldit, a video game that has allowed hundreds of thousands of players to contribute to biochemical scientific research. The long-term goal of this project is to utilize the combined power of humans and computers in order to build accurate models of disease-related proteins.
Kara Seawalk is an epidemiologist for Health Map at Boston Children’s Hospital. https://hms.harvard.edu/news/crowdsourcing-covid-19
Dr Črtomir Podlipnik is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He has a great scientific interest in the research of relevant biomolecular systems, and with his valuable, comprehensive knowledge in this field, he actively participates in many projects, including researches of Ebola and COVID-19. Together with colleagues and with support of Central Technical Library at the University of Ljubljana he organized Citizen science project – COVID.SI.
Angela Eaton leads Safecast’s air quality and radiation monitoring efforts and supports participatory environmental monitoring throughout the Americas. Currently, she’s working on COVID-19 response through the creation of a crowdsourced testing map and a virus progression diary. Angela also works with CSA member, Vivienne Byrd, at LAPL to add to its efforts in building citizen science communities at branches. She served as a Civil Society Working Group reviewer during the UN Habitat III process, in which the current sustainable development goals were established, and has consulted in sustainable systems design in urban water infrastructure, conservation and greenhouse gas reductions for non-profits, utilities, and cities. Despite Shelter in Place, Angela seeks new ways to encourage environmental monitoring as a means to satisfy the curious and empower communities.
Lea Shanley, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow in the Nelson Institute at the University of Wisconsin Madison and Advisor to SciStarter. Her research interests focus on the intersection of open science, technology, policy and law. Previously, Lea served as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow at NASA, co-founder of the Federal Citizen Science community of practice and citizenscinece.gov, and founding director of the Commons Lab at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. She was a CSA Board Member, and now serves on the CSA Law and Policy Working Group Steering Committee. T: @Lea_Shanley
Reanna Putnam is the Community Engagement Specialist for the Citizen Science Association. She coordinates CSA’s communications to enhance member engagement, supports Working Groups, and facilitates CSA’s ongoing webinar series. Reanna has a masters in Sociology from Colorado State University and over five years of experience working for non-profits.

COs4Cloud Webinar: Let's talk about Citizen Observatories
2020-04-28 15:00 - 16:00 (Europe/Rome)
Cos4Cloud (Co-designing Citizen Observatories Services for the European Open Science Cloud), a European project on technological innovation in citizen science, organizes a webinar to discuss the concept of citizen observatory as well as present opportunities and challenges of citizen observatories in the age of global change and crisis such as COVID-19.
Learn more and register here!

EGU General Assembly 2020
2020-05-04 08:00 - 2020-05-08 17:00 (Europe/Moscow)
EGU2020: Sharing Geoscience Online (#shareEGU20) brings part of the activities of the EGU General Assembly 2020 online. From 4 to 8 May 2020 (CEST) everyone can join EGU for their favourite sessions.
In the context of this online event, a dedicated session is taking place being entitled ‘Bridging between scientific disciplines: Participatory Citizen Science and Open Science as a way to go’.
In this session the following topics will be discussed:

Which approaches can be used in Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences?
What are the biggest challenges in bridging between scientific disciplines and how to overcome them?
What kind of participatory citizen scientist involvement and open science strategies exist?
How to ensure transparency in project results and analyses?
What kind of critical perspectives on the limitations, challenges, and ethical considerations exist?

The discussion will take place on Monday, 4 May 2020, 08:30–10:15 and 10:45–12:30.
Find out more information and check all the relevant displays here.

WeObserve webinar “Citizen Science in a remote sensing context: From examples to best practices”
2020-05-06 11:00 - 13:00 (Europe/Helsinki) | Online
A CO4EO webinar, entitled as ‘Citizen Science in a remote sensing context: From examples to best practices‘, was organized by the H2020 WeObserve project, aiming to present success stories where citizen science data are combined with conventional sources of Earth Observation data. The webinar was held on Wednesday, May 6th at 11:00 a.m. CEST. Focus was given to showcase best practices arising from the activities of H2020 Citizen Observatories (LandSense, GROW, GroundTruth 2.0, SCENT) and from other projects as well, while illustrating how the integration of Earth Observation and citizen science can improve environmental monitoring. Moreover, a discussion with the responsible of the Copernicus in-situ component took place towards the selection of a pilot to illustrate the potential of citizen-science as a contributor to Copernicus.
Download below all presentations:

FotoQuest Go: A Citizen Science App for Collecting In Situ Land Cover and Land Use Data;
Harnessing Citizen Science and Remote Sensing for Improved environmental monitoring;
Remote Sensing as a Driving Tool for Citizen Science Phenology Monitoring Campaigns;
Validation of remotely sensed soil moisture using crowdsourced measurements

Or listen the recording here.

Join the Open Data Challenge
2020-05-15 - 2020-07-31
With the acceleration of climate change, addressing environmental challenges has never been more urgent. More people now than ever before have direct experience of the increased pressure on our planet. They are calling for better protection for local issues that have an impact in their lives, from extreme events such as flooding and wild-fires to pollution. At the same time, people have to global concerns related to the wise use and regeneration of natural assets, biodiversity loss and risks such as food security.

Environmental data can help to address these issues. As a result of citizens coming together with scientists and other stakeholders there is a growing amount of high-quality and open data to apply to these challenges. There are opportunities to merge open datasets from local governments and data from these Citizen Science projects to produce new and exciting data products.
We see innovation potential in developing technologies, services and models e.g. in land management, biodiversity trackers, pollution monitoring, agriculture and disaster response. There are also opportunities to support people’s values by removing barriers, such as conflicting attitudes and responsibilities, lack of time, trust or space, or providing training and incentives to solve local issues through pro environmental action. It is clear that we all have a role to play and there is a great deal that needs to be done.

WeObserve is opening data from four Citizen Observatories (GROW, GroundTruth 2.0, LandSense, SCENT) to create new digital transformation opportunities by using open data for products, services that can be implemented for wider social good. There are a few key events that make up our Open Data Challenge: Team registration, Consent for access to online datasets, Challenge themes and opportunities, Guidance from a mentor, submission and demonstration at a final event. Each of these events are free and open to all.

To register or find out more about the Open Data Challenge, please visit here.

WEBINAR: Characteristics of citizen science
2020-05-27 13:00 - 14:00 (Europe/Rome)
ECSA and EU-Citizen.Science are co-hosting a webinar about the recently published ‘Characteristics of citizen science’. This document is the output of a community-based effort to outline what can be characterized as citizen science.
Led by members of the working group that wrote this document, the webinar will be an opportunity to learn more about its content, why defining characteristics of citizen science was necessary, and how it will benefit the field. Join us to find out more about this new resource and to ask the authors about it.
The event is free to attend and once you register you will get the link to the seminar room which will be held on Zoom. Registration will close 5 minutes after the start of the webinar and will be closed for access 10 minutes after the start.
Learn more and register here!

WEBINAR: Create your own air quality sensor!
2020-05-28 17:00 - 18:00 (Europe/Moscow)
Interesting webinar is organised by COs4CLOUD project, CanAirIO, SciStarter & Clean Air Carolina, aiming to showcase how to contribute to air quality monitoring through citizen science and how to make your own air quality sensor!
Learn more and register here!

WEBINAR: Citizen Science and SDGs
2020-05-28 17:00 - 18:00 (Europe/Moscow)
Traditional data sources are not sufficient for measuring the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. New and non-traditional sources of data are required. Citizen science is an emerging example of a non-traditional data source that is already making a contribution. Speakers will discuss how citizen science can be integrated into the formal United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reporting mechanisms, providing the results of a systematic review of the SDG indicators and citizen science initiatives that may address them. Successful use of citizen science data by National Statistics Offices (NSOs) and United Nations agencies will be highlighted. Success will require leadership from the United Nations, innovation from National Statistical Offices, and focus from the citizen science community to address the indicators for which citizen science can have a real impact.
Learn more and register here!

Bridging the gap between Science and Society through Citizen Science
2020-06-01 11:00 - 12:00 (Europe/Moscow)
Description and Scope
Citizen science interventions are becoming more and more relevant across all scientific disciplines and the humanities and it can potentially bring a wide variety of benefits to researchers, citizens, policy makers and society across the research and innovation cycle. Nevertheless, there are difficulties setting up citizen science initiatives, for example in terms of choosing the optimum methodologies and ensuring balanced participation of citizens.
The Webinar aims at introducing the REINFORCE project to the European Research community and to the broad public of potential citizen scientists, focusing mostly on the four Citizen Science Demonstrators that will be developed within the project. REINFORCE will create a series of cutting-edge citizen science projects on frontier Physics research, with citizen scientists making a genuine and valued contribution to managing the data avalanche, with the aim of reaching the following impacts:

Generating a change in awareness and understanding of basic research and its impact on society;
Developing new knowledge and innovations by citizens;
Offering availability of evaluation data concerning the societal, democratic and economic costs and benefits of citizen science; and
Making available indicators to measure the impact of citizen science activities.

Main Takeaways:

Understanding what is the potential of citizen science for society
Discovering the benefits of integrating citizens input in frontier Physics research
Keeping abreast with the research work carried out within Large Research Infrastructures

Who should attend:

EU Research community in Physics field
Potential citizen scientists
Gravitational Wave Astronomy researchers and academics
Neutrino Astronomy researchers and academics
High Energy and Cosmic Rays Physics experts
Marine life experts

To find out more information as well as the agenda please visit here.

Webinar: How to improve cloud services for marine data
2020-06-04 11:00 - 12:00 (Europe/Moscow)
The project PHIDIAS – Prototype of HPC/Data Infrastructure for On-demand Services, organises a webinar titled “Boosting the use of cloud services for marine data management, services and processing” on the 4th of June at 11AM CEST.
The webinar boasts the collaboration with Blue-Cloud project, and it will be focused on the Ocean data test case, which aims to improve the use of

Cloud services for marine data management,
Data services to the user in a FAIR perspective, and
Data processing on demand.

Please find any additional information, such as the agenda, the speakers’ list and the main takeaways on this dedicated page.

2020 Ecsite Conference
2020-06-11 08:00 - 2020-06-13 17:00 (Europe/Moscow) | Lubljana, Slovenia, Slovenia
The 2020 Ecsite Conference will be taking place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on 11-13 June 2020 and will be hosted by the Kersnikova Institute. The call for session proposals will be open up to 17 of October 2019.
The European science engagement conference addresses all professionals who engage audiences with science and technology. It offers an intense mix of intellectual stimulation, purposeful and creative sessions and inspiring human encounters. An annual professional development opportunity to sharpen your critical mind, recharge your batteries, harvest contacts and tools, make business and let off steam on the dance floor. More information about the conference are available here.

GEO Virtual Symposium 2020
2020-06-15 - 2020-06-19
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Group on Earth Observations has announced the format of the GEO Symposium 2020 to be held remotely from 15-19 June 2020. The global GEO community will benefit from a series of interactive webinars over the course of one week that will provide in-depth discussions from experts on a range of relevant issues to the GEO Work Programme Flagships, Initiatives and Activities.
At this first year of the 2020-2022 GEO Work Programme, the Symposium will focus on strengthening the capability of GEO Work Programme activities to implement their plans effectively. It will cover topics such as:

Water and Coastal Observations
Monitoring Essential Variables
Focusing on Impact: Regional GEOs
Co-designing Capacity Development
Resource Mobilization and Sustainable Funding
Contributing to Reproducible Knowledge
Engaging UN Agencies and Intergovernmental Organizations
Leveraging Advanced Technologies

Learn more about the foresseen sessions and register here!

Open Data Challenge Webinar
2020-06-16 15:00 (Europe/Helsinki)
The WeObserve team has launched an Open Data Challenge (ODC) and this webinar was an opportunity for you to discover the story of EU’s richest citizen-generated environmental datasets, spanning four Citizens’ Observatory projects: LandSense, GROW, GroundTruth 2.0 and SCENT, and ask any questions to the expert mentors who will be supporting participants throughout the ODC process. The ODC is a competitive online event and tender for participating individuals/teams to innovate using open environmental data from Citizen Observatories. Get a head start on winning one of the two €5,000 tender awards that will go to selected entries!
Download the webinar’s presentations or listen to the recording here.

9th Living Knowledge Webinar
2020-06-26 14:00 - 2020-06-28 17:00 (Europe/Moscow)
The 9th Living Knowledge Conference in Groningen is postponed to 2021, due to COVID-19. Instead of it, a webinar will take place on Friday June 26th from 14:00 to 17:00 CEST. The webinar will be hosted through Blackboard Collaborate Ultra. No download of software is required; all participants will receive a link to login. In the plenary a chat function will allow questions and discussion, while in the sub groups, microphone and video may be used as well.

PLENARY:
14.00 Introduction on Science Shops Groningen and the Living Knowledge Network (Henk Mulder)
14.20 Theme: Community-based Research and (post) Corona
15.00 Break
15.15 Parallel discussion tables
16.10 Break
16.25 Back to plenary session
Information on the speakers can be found here.
To find out more information on the event, please visit the official website here.

LandSense Innovation Challenge
2020-07-09 - 2020-09-11
The Challenge targets individuals, web-entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs coming from all participating Horizon 2020 countries, to present innovative IT solutions addressing one of the three LandSense domains:
1. Urban Landscape Dynamics;
2. Agricultural Land Use;
3. Forest and Habitat Monitoring;
The challenge focuses on using data streams coming from the LandSense Citizen Observatory, the Sentinel Hub Service or other relevant EO data sources to design novel LULC solutions for a range of applications within the selected domains.
Selected LandSense Challenge finalists will have the opportunity to pitch their ideas at the Third International ECSA Conference 2020 in Trieste, Italy. Please note that registration for the ECSA Conference is not required for participation in this public challenge. However, all finalists are encouraged to attend the conference and share with this growing community of citizen science practitioners.
Take part and win!
The teams with the best pitches will receive:
1st prize

A grand prize of 2,000 EUR
A 1-year subscription to Sentinel Hub Enterprise, worth 5,000 EUR, provided by SINERGISE
Online business coaching and mentorship services provided by the LandSense team

2nd prize

A grand prize of 1,000 EUR
Online business coaching and mentorship services provided by the LandSense team

3rd prize

A grand prize of 500 EUR
Online business coaching and mentorship services provided by the LandSense team

To apply or to find more details about the call, please visit here.

Vision-Building Workshop on Citizen Science
2020-07-21 10:00 - 12:30 (Europe/Moscow)
Can you imagine becoming part of the global effort to detect Gravitational Waves? Or explore cosmic events with a detector installed deep in the sea?
Citizen Science creates numerous opportunities for all citizens – independent of their location, gender, or education – to be involved in ground-breaking fundamental research. Through citizen science activities, everyone can contribute to the development of new knowledge. Increasingly, scientists from Large Research Infrastructures and Frontier Physics experiments are starting to share their data and ask for citizens to support the optimization of their detectors to enhance discoveries potential.
But how can citizens support their work?
Join us for this vision-building workshop in the REINFORCE project to help us design the best possible citizen science projects!
The workshop will be broadcasted on Zoom on the 21st of July 2020 from 10:00 AM to 12:30 AM CEST at this link, and it will showcase citizen science projects in frontier physics, with experts from infrastructures such as CERN, VIRGO/EGO, or KM3NeT introducing their ideas and engaging with participants to better undertand their interest, motivations and ideas to get involved and contribute in citizen science.
The workshop is part of the FRONTIERS Online Summer School 2020.

Website
https://zoom.us/j/91466752463

FRONTIERS Online Summer School 2020
2020-07-23 08:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Moscow)
Are you interested to learn how to introduce your students to topics such as the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN, the detection of Gravitational waves from black hole and neutron star mergers at Virgo and LIGO, or the discovery of exoplanets?
Do you want to learn how we can apply the principles of citizen science to the classroom? Do you want to join an international community of scientists, outreach experts and educators who share the same passion for bringing cutting edge research to the classroom in a systematic and engaging way that offers connection to school curricula?
If the answer is yes, then join the FRONTIERS e-Summer School: an online training course for science teachers motivated to introduce Nobel Prize Physics to their Classrooms. Concepts of Nobel Prize Physics will be explored and methodologies will be discussed to introduce them to the classroom. High-quality educational content will be established and educational content will be produced to be shared to all science teachers in Europe.
To register, please fill in this form.
To find out more on the Summer School, please visit here.

Become an author for the Conference Declaration - Citizen Science SDG Conference
2020-08-12 13:00 - 14:30 (Europe/Moscow) | Online
In this virtual meeting, will be discussed the scope of the Declaration from the ‘Citizen Science and the SDGs’ conference.
The purpose of the virtual meeting is to find collective answers to the following questions: Who develops the Declaration? Who are the recipients of the Declaration? What is the purpose of the Declaration? What are the goals of the Declaration?
To register, please click here.

Geospatial Sensing 2020
2020-08-31 - 2020-09-02
Earth observation networks, e.g. in-situ sensors and remote sensing systems, deliver a multitude of data capturing the state of our environment. These data sets are highly valued by scientists and stakeholders from a variety of domains and backgrounds such as hydrology, marine sciences, traffic management, environmental monitoring, energy supply or smart city systems. An active research and development community works on new approaches to share, manage, discover, analyze, and visualize geospatial sensor data. The Geospatial Sensing Conference provides a platform for scientists, developers and users to examine current challenges, present best practices and discuss future developments.
This virtual event will take place from August 31 – September 2, 2020. It continues the Geospatial Sensor Webs workshops and conferences that began in 2013. The focus ‘From Sensing to Understanding our World’ includes sensor data interpretation, analysis and visualization, tools and infrastructures for sharing geospatial sensor data, and novel sensor platforms.
The 52°North Open Innovation Network invites researchers, software developers and practitioners to submit abstracts as presentation proposals. This year’s program includes an EDC Forum session, which particularly invites members of Esri’s EDC community to present and discuss their work in the field of Geospatial Sensing.
The abstract should be 200 – 300 words and include title, authors and an outline of the presentation. Abstracts can be submitted as a pdf file to geospatialsensing@52north.org by June 14, 2020. All submissions will be reviewed by the program committee and accepted on the basis of content, available space, and overall program balance. The authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by July 14, 2020.

6th International Conference on Big Data for Official Statistics
2020-08-31 - 2020-09-02
The 6th International Conference on Big Data for official statistics took place from 31 August — 2 September 2020 as a virtual event. The Conference was organized by Statistics Korea (KOSTAT) and the United Nations Global Working Group (GWG) on Big Data for Official Statistics. The main theme of the Conference was “How can Big Data help in the COVID-19 response?” Related themes were: “How can Big Data support the monitoring of the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals?” and “The need for global data collaboration on global emerging issues”. Find out more about the conference here.
WeObserve partners participated in session 7 “Using Big Data for SDGs” of the conference, presenting the activities of the WeObserve ‘Citizen Observatories and SDGs Community of Practice‘ towards mapping citizen science contributions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Watch again the session recording from here and download the WeObserve presentation.

Citizen Science for the UN Sustainable Development Goals at ESOF2020
2020-09-03 16:15 - 17:45 (Europe/Moscow)
The 9th EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) took place on 2 – 6 Septemeber 2020, in Trieste, Italy, bringing together thousands of leading thinkers, innovators, policy makers, journalists and educators from more than 90 countries, to discuss current and future breakthroughs in contemporary science. WeObserve organised a session in the context of ESOF (Septemeber 3), focusing on the contribution of citizen science to SDG monitoring and implementation as part of the activities of the WeObserve “Citizen Observatories and SDGs Community of Practice (SDGs CoP).
Session details
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development intertwines social, economic and environmental targets to address the world’s most pressing challenges. To achieve these goals, good governance informed by accurate, accessible, timely and comprehensive data is needed, as well as a collective, inter-connected effort from all levels of society. Even though data availability and quality have improved over the years, there are still major gaps in the supply of more and reliable information that feed into policies with desirable outcomes for SDG achievement. For instance, 68% of the environmental SDG indicators lack sufficient data (UN Environment, 2019). Enabling an environment to facilitate the integration of traditional sources of data (e.g. administrative records, statistical surveys, etc.) and new data approaches such as citizen science, public participation in scientific research, is crucial to tackle this issue. Citizen science can complement traditional and new data sources (e.g. earth observations, etc.), enable active citizen involvement in the SDG processes and ensure government accountability.
This session outlined the ongoing efforts of the citizen science community on the contribution of citizen science to SDG monitoring and implementation such as the “Citizen Observatories and SDGs Community of Practice (SDGs CoP)” as part of the European Commission funded WeObserve project. The SDGs CoP brought together citizen science practitioners, researchers and representatives of UN custodian agencies, broader data communities and other key actors in the field to develop an understanding about how to demonstrate the value of citizen science for SDG achievement. The session also drew on examples of citizen science initiatives that are contributing or could contribute to the SDG progress and provided recommendations on collaborations between citizens, governments, private sectors and intergovernmental organizations for design and actions to achieve the SDGs.
You can read and download the presentation here.

ECSA Conference 2020
2020-09-06 - 2020-09-11 | Trieste, Italy, Italy
The ECSA 2020 conference – Encounters in citizen science was held exclusively online (6-11 September), and only registered participants could have access to the conference sessions. The program is available here.
Stemming from the project activities, WeObserve partners organised the following session contributions in the context of the program:

Citizen science and the SDGs II: https://vimeo.com/451829764/bfd6d8a3ab

The contribution of citizen science to the monitoring of the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Presenters: Dilek Fraisl, Linda See
Summary: The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a call to action to tackle the world’s greatest challenges. The key question is how to achieve the SDGs when there are large data gaps or the data are not comprehensive enough to make timely decisions to enhance people’s wellbeing. This session will demonstrate the value of citizen science for the SDGs including examples of how citizen science currently contributes to SDG monitoring as well as where it has the potential to contribute. Recommendations for how citizen science data can be integrated into the official statistics used for SDG reporting will be provided.

Networks and communities of practice: https://vimeo.com/451830806/50fd13737c

Practice what we preach: co-creating value with participants in communities of practice on citizen science
Presenters: Uta Wehn, Dilek Fraisl, Joan Maso
Onto new horizons: learnings from the WeObserve project to strengthen awareness, acceptability and sustainability of citizen observatories in Europe
Presenters: Gerid Hager
Summary: WeObserve delivers the first European-wide Citizen Observatory (CO) knowledge platform to share and highlight best practices and to identify and address challenges to inform practitioners, policy makers and funders of (future) COs. This presentation aims to discuss key insights and recommendations acquired from the WeObserve project, to inform the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (under Pillar II: Global Challengesand European Industrial Competitiveness and activities for “Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area”), as well as other funding programmes and CO practitioners more generally.
Presentation slides available at: https://zenodo.org/record/4017257#.X1iYNmczZTZ

Global perspectives on Citizen Science and Open Science (Side Event)

Citizen Science (CS) and Open Science (OS) are emerging global movements that are becoming more
significant and layered in regard to key themes, dynamics, and shared characteristics. Now, there is an important opportunity for clarifying key synergies and opportunities for alignment moving forward.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) is developing a global Recommendation on Open Science to be released in 2021. As a legally binding instrument that applies to all UN Member states, the Recommendation seeks to help shape the future of open science from a global public policy perspective. In May 2020, UNESCO invited citizen science practitioners to collaborate in the process of developing their Recommendation. To ensure ongoing input and information exchange from global citizen science communities a Community of Practice (CoP) of the Citizen Science Global Partnership (CSGP) was formed, with the particular intention of drawing on knowledge from the broadest citizen science base to support and inform a broad and holistic open science agenda.
This session offered the background to this initiative from UNESCO and described the first steps of the CoP. In addition, lightning talks from different practitioners working at the nexus of citizen science and open science were featured. The session concluded with a roundtable discussion to collaboratively identify key considerations and next steps for the common future of CS and OS agendas.

AmeriGEOSS Symposium 2020
2020-09-07 - 2020-09-08
The 2020 Americas Symposium aims to bring communities together to ​identify the synergies ​and paths toward collaboration ​​among​ regional efforts related to ​the integration of​ Earth Observations, Geographic, Statistical and other information. The main objectives of the Symposium are to:

Improve coordination and dialog between the Member States and relevant international organizations to share experience in the application of Earth Observations, Geographic, and Statistical information to establish better practices, adoption and use of technologies to support the decision-making process.
Increase the Member States’ capacity to develop and establish user-driven mechanisms for efficient management and use of Earth observations, Geographic and Statistical information.
Establish relationships and cooperation mechanisms with other programs to promote the integration of earth observations, geographic, and statistical information to address with a comprehensive approach to regional and national issues.

WeObserve participated to the Symposium presenting the results of the systematic review that was conducted regarding the contribution of citizen-science to the Sustainable Development Goals monitoring. This activity was realised by members of the WeObserve SDGs Community of Practice.
You may watch again the video of the presentation here.
Additionally, all the recorded Symposium presentations can be found here.

116TH OGC Member Meeting
2020-09-14 - 2020-09-21
The 116th OGC Member Meeting will be organised as virtual event including a broad range of meetings and topics being discussed. The Citizen Science Domain Working Group (DWG) will organise a session on September 14th, 8:20 AM – 9:00 AM (EDT) discussing topics stemming from activities of Citizen Observatories as well as of the WeObserve Community of Practice on interoperability and standards for Citizen Observatories. In particular the following presentations are foreseen:

Citizen Science and Personal Data Protection – The LandSense Approach | Andreas Matheus (Secure Dimensions)
Practicalities and challenges related to an AQ citizen science project in Thessaloniki, Greece | Kostas Karatzas (auth.gr)
Second phase of the CitSci Interoperabiliyt Experiment report | Joan Masó (UAB-CREAF)

More details about the OGC meeting and the participation to the Citizen Science DWG session can be found here.

Tackle Odour Pollution with OdourCollect app
2020-09-30 17:00 - 18:15 (Europe/Moscow) | Online
Odour pollution is the second reason for citizens’ complaints after noise, across Europe. Frequent exposure to odour is associated with headache, stress and respiratory problems. Odour nuisance is an indicator of larger environmental issues, such as poor waste management or polluted water.
OdourCollect app is a citizen science observatory for the citizens to monitor odour pollution. Being aware of this pollution empowers us to press the goverments to design odour pollution control measures at local, national and global levels.
During the webinar, the participants will learn why it is important to measure odour pollution, how citizen science can be an ally to monitor it and how can participate in OdourCollect project!
Agenda:

Why is it important to measure odour pollution?
Citizen science as an ally to monitor odour nuisance
OdourCollect project: how does it work, how can you participate?
Questions

Where?
From home. Webinar via Zoom and live on Cos4Cloud’s YouTube channel!
The speaker:
Rosa Arias is CEO and founder of Science for Change. She is a Chemical Engineer with more than ten years experience as innovation manager and environmental consultant in air quality, odour pollution at industrial level, sustainability and energy. She is the creator of the citizen science App OdourCollect that empowers citizens to tackle odour pollution.
The organizers:
Cos4Cloud is a project to boost citizen science technologies that will co-design and develop ten technological services to ensure the viability in the long-term of citizen science observatorie and help them reach a global scope. The services will be available in the new European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), a virtual space aimed at the European scientific community. In the project participate 9 citizen observatories, among them OdourCollect.
Science for Change tackles societal challenges affecting communities using innovative solutions based on citizen science.

WeObserve online course 'Citizen Science Projects: How to Make a Difference'
2020-10-05 - 2020-11-01
WeObserve invites you to take part on its updated second Massive Open Online Course entitled ‘Citizen Science Projects: How to Make a Difference’

After a very interesting and successful first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) last November, WeObserve together with the FutureLearn platform organize a second run of its online course, starting on 5th of October 2020. The course will last four weeks with flexible hours of study and is addressing everyone interested in citizen science or citizen observatories who is keen on designing a citizen science project.
Within the course, the participants will discover how to lead a citizen science project, including the best practices for community buildings, how to identify the most pressing questions for your community, and tupos on data collection and interpretation. Furthermore, the learners will find out how to use their findings for educational purposes so as to create a positive change in the environment and their local area. For the learners that took part in the first run of the course, this final and updated run is a great opportunity to explore new topics, including new resources and open source downloadable tools. To register to the course, please visit here. To find out more information about the WeObserve Massive Online Courses visit the page here.
