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.

5th CoPs Forum
2020-10-12 - 2020-10-13 | Online
The WeObserve CoPs Forum #5 was organised as an online event on October 12-13, 2020. The main forum objectives were to:

Promote fertilisation of knowledge, ideas & insights on Citizen Science and Citizen Observatories across the 4 WeObserve Communities of Practice
Start process of capturing the ‘WeObserve way’ of consolidating knowledge on citizen science via Communities of Practice
Finalize collecting the findings of the Interop-CoP and compile them in the Engineering Report.

In order to make this a fruitful and productive experience, partcipants were able to work in short sprints with concrete objectives (decided a-priori or at the beginning of the sprint) whilst separate sessions took place, with opportunities to work alone on some aspects of the discussions and obligation to report progress back in the reporting back session.
Overall, the event was made up of 3 distinct online sessions as presented below:

Time
Description

Monday 12, October

13:00-14:00
Welcome
Welcome; objectives & detailed agenda for the online event; Tour de Table; Quick updates from each CoP

14:00-14:30
Coffee break

14:30-16:00
Sprint One
Cross CoPs Fertilisation: Table issues in Citizens Science and grab the speaker’s corner box

Tuesday 13, October

10:00-10:15
Welcome
Welcome & agenda for the day; Reporting on Day 1

10:15-12:00
Sprint Two
Cross CoPs paper: outline & feedback
Interop CoP: Writing the Engineering Report

12:00-14.00
Lunch break

14:00-15:30
Sprint Three
Cross CoPs paper: survey design

Interop CoP: Activities for the 3rt phase of the IE

15:30-16:30
Plenary reporting back from Sprints, Future CoPs host & Wrap up

Knowledge for Change: A decade of Citizen Science (2020-2030) in support of the SDGs
2020-10-14 - 2020-10-15
Hybrid conference – Take part in Berlin or virtually!

A conference entitled ‘Knowledge for Change: A decade of Citizen Science (2020-2030) in support of the SDGs’ is organised in Berlin on October 14-15, 2020, aiming to present, evaluate and discuss the exciting contributions that citizen science makes in framing and achieving sustainable development, specifically the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The conference will bring together expertise from policy makers, institutional and citizen scientists, economists, NGOs and civil society to implement mechanisms and processes for the transition towards a more sustainable future.
The conference addresses topics around citizen science such as:

Citizen science for the UN Sustainable Development Goals, e.g. good health and well-being, quality education, life on land and below water;
Policy and scientific methodology of citizen science to implement the SDGs;
Scientific benefit of citizen science networks and platforms and their impact on society

Further details about the conference are available here. To register, please visit here.
WeObserve sessions
In the context of the conference, WeObserve organizes three sessions involving innovative and interactive formats (i.e. fishbowl, Pecha Kucha, panel discussion, etc) while also inviting the submission of contributions from relevant projects and initiaves towards presenting the landscape of Citizens Observatories and citizen science tools and inovations that support sustainable development. The WeObserve sessions are presented below while further details about each session can be found here:

Contribution of Citizen Science Data to Monitoring the SDGs
Citizen observatories: the landscape, tools and data innovations for sustainable development (open call for contributions)
Transformative potential of citizen science and citizen observatories for mobilising action towards achieving the SDGs

WeObserve invites participants to submit their contributions on ‘Citizen observatories: the landscape, tools and data innovations for sustainable development‘ session. Contributions should be submitted as abstracts which should be no longer than 350 words and include the title of the session. The session seeks speakers and exhibitors who are interested in sharing their experiences, lessons, knowledge and expertise from successful citizen science projects about relevant tools, data and innovations that support sustainable development.
The submissions will be open up to July 13, 2020 July 20,2020, 23.59h CET. Please submit your abstract here.

Roadshow event No. 2 (Barcelona)
2020-10-16 | online, Spain
Date: 16 October 2020
Location: online event
Agenda:
10-10.10h. Welcome and introduction
10.10-10.40h. Setting the scene – the Tordera river & Storm Gloria
10.40-11.10h. Demonstration of a citizen observatory: overview of the citizen observatory of water (Alto Adriatico Water Authority)
11.10-11.55h. Group work
11.55h-12.45h. Plenary discussion on CO implementation: social and technological dimensions
12.45-13.00h. Recap and closing of the Roadshow event
During the Barcelona Roadshow event, the specific situation of the Tordera river during and after storm Gloria was considered to demonstrate the potential and practical implementation of a citizen observatory for flood risk management. In January 2020, storm Gloria had affected Eastern Spain badly with high winds and heavy rains. The storm caused coastal flooding and heavy damages in the Tordera river basin. It lasted 4-5 days and generated 19-23mm of precipitation which in many regions is half of what it rains in a year. According to civil protection workers, there was a lack of civil protection planning and this resulted in the situation being difficult to control. Infrastructure was affected such as roads, rail network high voltage towers, the desalination plant of the area, and campsites. During the Roadshow event, we discussed the potential of Citizen Observatories in the context of flood risk management and what elements come into play when implementing a Citizen Observatory. The 16 participants included regional policymakers and disaster managers.
In the Breakout Room entitled ‘ In what ways could a CO help you address your info needs during a flood?’, it was highlighted that a citizen observatory could have an amplifying effect in the community to alert and inform citizens with reliable and consolidated information, avoiding scattered sources. The power of social media channels could be used to spread information and reach more people. Citizen observatories were also perceived to play in planning, presenting a complementary source, while maintaining the role of the official administration. Finally, the Agència Catalana de l’Aigua (ACA) will launch a project called AGORA, to set up a citizen observatory that will inform participants about the main landmarks in a flood episode. In this way, people would be able to monitor specific spots and obtain real-time data. Regarding the question ‘What (else) would you like to get out of a citizen observatory (from a technological and/or social perspective)?, participants deemed it important to have information beyond actual protection plans. For example, early warnings, alert sensors (to anticipate effects by the hour), set up warnings downstream, automatic systems of sirens or lights to translate alerts into real alerts to whoever needs them. According to the current regulation, “The citizen has the right to be informed of the risk he has”. Citizen Observatories were seen to help raise awareness of floods in general and of vulnerable areas in particular, while also counterbalancing fake news. In the third Breakout Room, participants discussed challenging aspects of implementing a citizen observatory. The quality and the veracity of collected information were mentioned as main challenges. In some cases, the information may not be reliable or/and it could be fictitious. To prevent that, control systems were deemed necessary. The discussion also pointed to potentially low levels of participation and engagement, issues with use of technology and training participants, and awareness-raising as further challenging aspects. The consensus emerging during the plenary session was that thanks to the citizen observatories, it is possible to have improved access to people who can contribute to reducing risk and vulnerability.
Watch the video here.

How to help scientists in the Gravitational Wave noise hunt
2020-10-16 15:00 - 16:15 (Europe/Moscow)
This webinar is organised by the H2020 REINFORCE project, aiming to give an overview of the first of the project’s Large Scale Citizen Science demonstrators which are the key vehicles that the project will utilise in order to bring frontier science and society together, showcasing the issue that the citizens will be asked to help in solving, how this activity will be performed relying on Zooniverse resources and technologies, and how the sonification of data will allow to widen the spectrum of people potentially involved.
In REINFORCE, the citizen science activities will support the optimization of the Virgo detector, allowing citizens to learn the basics of GW detection techniques, and how the noise signals and GW signals look. One of the innovative aspects of the project is that it aims to include diverse and underrepresented groups in science, by providing them with tools to overcome specific barriers, such as the sonification of data for visually-impaired people.
More details about the event can be found here.

How to help scientists in the Gravitational Wave noise hunt
2020-10-16 15:00 - 16:30 (Europe/Moscow)
The sensitivity of Gravitational Waves detectors is limited by several types of noise, called glitches, whose presence affects the quality of the data. The glitches can have various origins, having a stationary nature (e.g. a noise signal with a stable frequency) or being transient on various timescales. In order to optimize and run the interferometers it is fundamental to identify the sources of noise and reduce or eliminate its origin.
In this framework, citizen scientists can play a fundamental role by looking at chunks of data and identify the presence of noise, creating the basis to train machine learning algorithms that will automatically recognize and isolate noise in GW data, thus providing a monitoring of the noise with an unprecedented detail. Citizen scientists’ support will be crucial also to isolate astrophysical signals that cannot easily be modeled with the general relativity equations, and whose shape is unknown, such as supernovae ones.
In REINFORCE, the citizen science activities will support the optimization of the Virgo detector, allowing citizens to learn the basics of GW detection techniques, and how the noise signals and GW signals look. One of the innovative aspects of the project is that it aims to include diverse and underrepresented groups in science, by providing them with tools to overcome specific barriers, such as the sonification of data for visually-impaired people.
The webinar aims to give an overview of the first of REINFORCE Large Scale Citizen Science demonstrators which are the key vehicles that the project will utilise in order to bring frontier science and society together, showcasing the issue that the citizens will be asked to help in solving, how this activity will be performed relying on Zooniverse resources and technologies, and how the sonification of data will allow to widen the spectrum of people potentially involved.
To register to the webinar, please visit here. See below the agenda of the webinar.
AGENDA
15:00-15:05 – Welcome – Chris Lintott (Zooniverse)
15:05-15:12 – Broad overview – Stavros Katsanevas (EGO, Project Coordinator)
15:12-15:25 – REINFORCE Gravitational Wave Noise Hunting Demonstrator – Massimiliano Razzano (University of Pisa, WP3 leader)
15:25-15:40 – The use of sonification in REINFORCE – Beatriz Garcia (CONICET)
15:40-15:50 – Virgo and international GW network – Julia Casanueva (Virgo)
15:50-15:55 – Introduction to the European Gravitational Observatory – Francesca Spagnuolo (EGO, EU Program Coordinator)
15:55-16:05 – GW and Citizen Science for education – Emmanuel Chaniotakis (EA)
16:05-16:15 – Q&A and wrap-up

UN World Data Forum 2020
2020-10-19 - 2020-10-21
A UN World Data Forum will be held virtually on 19–21 October 2020. The forum is designed to bring together representatives, users and producers, from various sectors working with data to support the implementation of Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). WeObserve participates in the Forum, aiming to demonstrate examples and methods of monitoring SDGs through citizen-science enabled frameworks and Citizen Observatories.

Integrating Citizen Science into the Official SDG Monitoring Mechanisms and A Proposal to Use Unofficial Statistics for SDG Reporting (to Deal with Crises) – October 19: WeObserve shared experiences with respect to the activities of the “Citizen Observatories and SDGs Community of Practice” while also discussing key aspects on the combination of citizen-generated data with conventional data sources and mechanisms for SDG monitoring and reporting.
Tools to enable UN Member States at national and local level to use Earth observations to help deliver SDG 11 and the New Urban Agenda – (pre-recorded session): WeObserve partners participated in the discussion around the contributions of citizen science data in support of Goal 11 and the New Urban Agenda (NUA). Additionally, examples of relevant applications were presented, such as the CityOases project; a partnership between city of Vienna and IIASA that aims to improve the database of open urban spaces and identify people’s perceptions about them, helping inform indicator 11.7.1 (open public space in cities).

The detailed programme is available here.

LandSense Mapathon
2020-10-19 - 2020-12-31
Connecting citizens and satellite data for land use mapping across the EU
Using OpenStreetMap and Sentinel 2 satellite imagery LandSense project created a citizen-powered land use map of the EU. As part of the European Week of Regions and Cities a mapathon (https://landsense.eu/Mapathon) is taking place aiming to help validate the OSMLandUse product created at the GIScience Research Group in Heidelberg.
You can contribute in up to four themes (Urban, Agriculture, Nature and Expert) and your responses are anonymously checked against other volunteers to ensure data quality standards.
The results of this mapathon will be made openly available for public use.
JOIN & CONTRIBUTE

European Science Engagement Conference
2020-10-29 - 2020-10-30
The European Science Engagement Conference annually unites the international community of science communication and public engagement professionals. EUSEA2020 offers all practitioners in the field a Pan-European platform to expand their networks and enhance their skills via inspiring keynotes, interactive sessions and co-creative workshops.
The conference shares and discusses relevant topics, funding programs and formats mainly related to the areas of public engagement and science communication. In 2020 the conference will be held in Cork, Ireland.
You can find the detailed program and the registration form here: https://eusea.info/eusea-annual-conference/programme/

European Science Engagement Conference (EUSEA 2020)
2020-10-29 08:00 - 2020-10-30 17:00 (Europe/Moscow) | Online
#EUSEA2020 Goes Online!
The European Science Engagement Conference annually unites the international community of science communication and public engagement professionals. EUSEA2020 offers all practitioners in the field a Pan-European platform to expand their networks and enhance their skills via inspiring keynotes, interactive sessions and co-creative workshops.
The conference shares and discusses relevant topics, funding programs and formats mainly related to the areas of public engagement and science communication. In 2020 the conference will be held in Cork, Ireland.
You can find the detailed program and the registration form here: https://eusea.info/eusea-annual-conference/programme/

About the organizer
EUSEA is an international knowledge-sharing platform and accelerator of innovation in the fields of public engagement. The association addresses experts involved in the design, organisation and implementation of public engagement activities across Europe. Eusea is an active consortium member in projects funded by the European Commission and supports partners in European funding policies.
In times of rapid changes in scientific institutions and society at large, science festivals and public engagement activities offer much more than “edutainment”. Collaboratively designed events can build bridges – between science and society, researchers and citizens, policy makers and innovators.
The formats are as diverse as the institutions behind them: All across Europe you will find Science Festivals, Researchers’ Nights, Science Parliaments or Maker Faires, organized by universities, municipalities, science centers or cultural institutions. Many such events have evolved all over Europe: from Slovenia to Sweden, from Portugal to Poland, from Israel to Iceland – and more are on the way.
EUSEA initiates and supports many of these activites as a strong partner striving to develop science festivals and public engagement activities that make an impact across Europe.

Website
https://eusea.info/

GEO Week 2020
2020-11-02 - 2020-11-06
Join GEO Week for a week-long showcase on the impact of open Earth observations on 2-6 November 2020

The GEO Week will take place online on November 2 – 6, 2020. Focused on the key priorities of boosting the digital economy, delivering on GEO’s Engagement Priorities, promoting sustainable development, supporting national initiatives, and highlighting approaches to open data, this week-long series of online events is intended to engage leaders from across the GEO Community to share lessons and advance policies and programs to impact our planet.
A highlight this year will be the Industry Track focused on exhibiting Earth observation solutions and services from across the world. A dedicated Networking Platform will bring together development practitioners, governments, and the private sector with a special focus on supporting Small and Medium Micro – sized Enterprises (SMMEs) to advance their access to knowledge, markets, and partners. With virtual talks, match making between business to business and business to government (B2B and B2G) in virtual rooms, the Space Tech Challenge competition announcement, and giveaways, this online event aims to build momentum for an in-person Industry Track in Port Elizabeth, South Africa next year. For updates regarding the event, please sign-up here.

Workshop on Citizen Sociolinguistics
2020-11-03 14:00 - 2020-11-04 16:30 (Europe/Moscow)
In recent years, Citizen Science (CS), that is engaging citizens or lay people in doing scientific research, has gained momentum in a wide range of disciplines, including sociolinguistics. CS has a long tradition within natural sciences, and its primary impacts are seen in biological studies of global climate change, in biological changes in natural habitats.
This workshop explores what citizen science is, and particularly what Citizen Sociolinguistics is. It presents examples of different CS initiatives and discusses the epistemological rationale for CS, and particularly CS projects within humanities. Important topics for discussion concern the quality of citizen data, the ability of citizens’ protocol to produce valid data, the level of citizen involvement in the research process, as well as the extent to which and how CS can lead to empowerment and democratisation as stated in many recent international research policy papers. The workshop also includes the role of CS as part of an open science policy.
Find out more here.

Data-driven Urban Mobility Planning and Citizen Science
2020-11-05 14:00 - 15:00 (Europe/Paris)
Mobilising Mobility: Data-driven Urban Mobility Planning and Citizen Science: a match made in heaven – WeCount and ClairCity
How can data be used to contribute to sustainable urban mobility planning? What are the most cost-effective tools for public authorities? Can citizen-science contribute for this effort? As COVID-19 creates new and complex challenges for urban mobility, and policymakers face tighter budgets, these are key questions which must be addressed.
The webinar will draw from the experience of two EU-funded initiatives, WeCount and ClairCity, to examine the potential for citizen science to deliver data-driven urban mobility planning.
Register and find out more!

Webinar - Indigenous and Community Monitoring
2020-11-09 16:00 - 17:30 (Europe/Paris)
The event is part of the INECE webinar series aiming to explore current and potential uses of citizen/community science initiatives to improve environmental monitoring, compliance and enforcement around the world.
This session will explore how Indigenous and local communities are using community science to uncover environmental injustice and improve environmental protection on their lands.
Panelists:

Tom Bewick, Peru Country Director, Rainforest Foundation US;
Ruth Noguerón, Senior Associate, World Resources Institute;
Ellen Pfeiffer, Researcher in Citizen Science, UN IHE;
LeRoy Paddock, Managing Director, INECE Secretariat; Visiting Scholar, Environmental Law Institute, Moderator

Register for the Webinar Here.

Webinar: The Characteristics of Citizen Science
2020-11-12 14:00 - 15:00 (Europe/Moscow)
The field of citizen science is expanding rapidly, and many different actors are becoming involved in harnessing the field for knowledge generation and public engagement with science. However, reaching consensus on a common definition is still a challenge, and perhaps not possible, because the types of activities that can fall under the umbrella of citizen science are so broad, and placed at the intersection of numerous scientific fields.
However, there is often a need to seek a discipline- or context-specific definition (such as for a specific funding call). The EU-Citizen.Science consortium, in building the platform to share Citizen Science projects and resources, has also run into this need to communicate a clear definition, as guidance to those who would like to share their project and resources with the wider community.
A working group was therefore formed of consortium partners, led by ECSA and ECSA’s co-vice chair Muki Haklay, which sought to encompass the plurality of views from citizen science practitioners and affiliated communities, and to identify the common characteristics that practitioners expect from a citizen science project.
This Webinar will present the first outcomes of this process. Find out more and register!

Roadshow event No. 3 (Slovenia)
2020-11-18 | Online, Slovenia
Date: 18 November 2020
Location: online event
Agenda:
9.30-9.50h Welcome and introduction
9.50-10.10h Slovene experience with flooding and other natural disasters
10.10-10.50h Practical demonstration of a citizen observatory
10.50-11.35h Group work
11.35- 12.20h Plenary discussion
12.20-12.30h Recap and closing of the Roadshow event

The third WeObserve Roadshow event was held together with the cross-border project VISFRIM (Vipava/Vipacco and Other Transboundary River Basins Flood Risk Management), co-financed under the Interreg V-A Italy-Slovenia Cooperation Program (https://www.ita-slo.eu/visfrim) whose main goal is to improve flood risk management in cross-border river basins by implementing citizen observatories.
This Roadshow event was addressed to local authorities, regional/national policy-makers, scientists and experts that aim to demonstrate the potential and practical implementation of a citizen observatory for flood risk management. This event had a special focus on the Slovenian context and allowed participants to learn about the basic principles of citizen observatories, providing participants with (virtual) hands-on experience of citizen science and citizen observatories and demonstrating how decision-makers are using the information provided by citizens.
Specifically, the Alto Adriatico Water Authority (AAWA) showcased how their citizen observatory effectively helps in the management of the Brenta-Bacchiglione river basin. Based on this experience, participants discussed the potential of citizen observatories in the context of flood risk mitigation and what comes into play when implementing a Citizen Observatory.
Download here the Save-the-date document.
Registration: by invitation only

Webinar on CS financial sustainability
2020-11-19 10:00 - 12:00 (Europe/Paris)
On November the 19th ACTION team will host an online event with experts exploring different path towards financial sustainability.
The event is organised in three parts: in the first part experts will talk about Corporate Social Responsibility, social impact funding, crowdfunding and other possible solutions for supporting citizen science initiatives, especially those focusing on pollution and other environmental issues. In the second part a round table will support the audience in having a clearer picture on how to get benefits out of this sustainability options. The third and last part will be an open discussion among participants.
Learn more and register!

CITIZEN SCIENCE CONFERENCE 2020
2020-11-20
Strengthening ties between science, education and society is one of the major topics in University of Twente’s new strategy Shaping2030, and there are many ways to achieve this, with citizen science being one of them. The term citizen science refers to an equal basis for collaboration in tackling societal challenges using scientific methods.
University of Twente organises the Citizen Science conference, which takes place on 20 November 2020, with the ambition to join forces with all those that are interested or involved in Citizen Science.

Workshop on VGI for Land Cover/Use
2020-11-24 - 2020-11-25
An online workshop entitled ‘The use of volunteer Geographic Information for producing and maintaining authoritative land use and land cover data’ is organized on behalf of EuroSDR (A European Spatial Data Research network organization linking national mapping and cadastral agencies with research institutes & universities), the LandSense project (A Citizen Observatory and Innovation Marketplace for Land Use and Land Cover Monitoring) and IGN (The French National Mapping Agency). LandSense delivers innovate technologies for data collection, change detection, data quality assessment, offering tools and systems to empower different communities (e.g., private companies, NGOs, NMAs, research, public authorities) for land use and land cover (LULC) monitoring and reporting.
The major areas of interest include the following topics:

Feature-based LULC data production
Feature-based LULC update
LULC Change detection
LULC Monitoring services
Collection and Use of VGI to produce LULC data
VGI and authoritative LULC data integration
LULC data quality assessment
LULC data infrastructure
LULC data policies.

Submissions are encouraged (1 page maximum) from participants willing to share their experiences, algorithms, research approaches, use-cases, future planning linked to the listed topics by October 11 2020.
Participation in the workshop is free of charge. However, advance registration will be strictly required. Registration will be opened till November 11 2020.
More infromation about the workshop can be found here.

Art Pluriverse: A Community Science Series
2020-12-03 - 2020-12-23
The Biennale of Western Balkans opens a month-long online programme of collective actions for intangible cultural heritage and open knowledge. The programme focuses on empowering communities of practice in the Balkan region, documenting their cultural knowledge in cooperative, ethical and accessible ways. The 1st edition aims to uplift local knowledge and intangible cultural practices related to textiles, through the development of FAIR community archives and research-based art creation.
More info: https://bowb.org
