Building Resilience to Chronic Landslide Hazard Through Citizen Science

Cieslik, Katarzyna; Shakya, Puja; Uprety, Madhab; Dewulf, Art; Russell, Caroline; Clark, Julian; Dhital, Megh Raj; Dhakal, A

doi:10.3389/feart.2019.00278

Cited by 26 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 102 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Student-led data collection activities, involving varying degrees of training a priori, are likewise a typical component of citizen science interventions in schools (Le Féon et al, 2016;Bracey, 2018;Saunders et al, 2018;Davids et al, 2019). Such co-generation of new scientific data and its dissemination constitutes two-way information flow between scientist and student participant, which enhances uptake and retention rate (e.g., Buytaert et al, 2014;Paul et al, 2018;Cieslik et al, 2019). We therefore propose that activities be balanced equally between classroom teaching, technical training, and scientific data collection.…”

Section: Methodology Framework Constructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The school setting also provides continuity throughout the academic term and generational succession. In developing countries, teachers are generally among the most knowledgeable and respected community members, while children are enthusiastic receptors of new information, which can then be reported back to parents (Cieslik et al, 2019). Finally, skill training and results dissemination allow integration of the educational objectives in a classroom setting, ensuring societal outreach.…”

Section: Citizen Science In Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Here, we explore the development of a literaturegrounded framework for citizen science in such a context, testing it against a case study of two secondary schools in western Nepal. We seek to operate in the shared space between science and education, i.e., generating new scientific data while also enhancing local environmental awareness (Paul et al, 2018;Cieslik et al, 2019). In addition, we explore how to enhance the longevity of citizen science activities (Figure 1) at a community level.…”

Section: Motivation Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a remote region of the Lesser Himalayas of western Nepal, these were the municipalities of Sunkuda, Bajhang district; and Bajedi, Bajura district (Figure 2). The geological characteristics of these two sites are described in detail elsewhere (Cieslik et al, 2019).…”

Section: Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Applying Citizen Science for Sustainable Development: Rainfall Monitoring in Western Nepal

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We introduce a case-study agnostic framework for the application of citizen science in a sustainable development context. This framework is tested against an activity in two secondary schools in western Nepal. While the purpose of this activity is to generate locally relevant knowledge on the physical processes behind natural hazards, we concentrate here on its implementation, i.e., to obtain a better understanding of the dynamic of the activity and to learn how it should be implemented. We determined the social capital of secondary schools as a gateway to the local community: they provide a unique setting to bring different stakeholders together. We find that co-designing a teaching programme is an effective means of both complementing local curricula and ensuring continued buy-in of local stakeholders (i.e., teachers). Student engagement depends on the local relevance of teaching materials, with more holistic or global concepts, such as climate change of lesser importance. Our activity focused on rainfall, including student-led data collection. These rainfall data provide a very good fit to co-located rain gauge data, with an average difference on weekly readings of 11.8%, reducing to 8.3% when averaged over all student readings. The autonomous development of student-organized science clubs suggested that our original framework underestimated students' capacity to apply knowledge elsewhere creatively. These clubs may be used to obtain participant feedback to improve and tailor future activities. Quantitative assessment of long-term sustainability remains challenging, due in part to high levels of student turnover. We suggest that integrating scientists wherever possible within a school or local community has a direct and positive result on participant retention.

show abstract

Section: Methodology Framework Constructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Citizen Science In Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Motivation Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Applying Citizen Science for Sustainable Development: Rainfall Monitoring in Western Nepal

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Problems caused by financial incentives: Lave (2012) discussed the ethics of utilizing citizen scientists as a source of unpaid labor and Cieslik et al (2019), regarding mobilization of people of low socioeconomic status, stated that financial compensation, or other non‐monetary incentives, are right and necessary. Yang, Ng, and Cai (2019) warned that neglecting participant heterogeneity when designing or implementing an incentive allocation program risks undercutting the ultimate outcome due to differences in attitudes, beliefs, and experiences that can cause people to respond quite differently to the same incentives.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The benefits and negative impacts of citizen science applications to water as experienced by participants and communities

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Citizen science is proliferating in the water sciences with increasing public involvement in monitoring water resources, climate variables, water quality, and in mapping and modeling exercises. In addition to the well-reported scientific benefits of such projects, in particular solving data scarcity issues, it is common to extol the benefits for participants, for example, increased knowledge and empowerment. We reviewed 549 publications concerning citizen science applications in the water sciences to examine personal benefits and motivations, and wider community benefits. The potential benefits of involvement were often simply listed without explanation or investigation. Studies that investigated whether or not participants and communities actually benefitted from involvement, or experienced negative impacts, were uncommon, especially in the Global South. Assuming certain benefits will be experienced can be fallacious as in some cases the intended benefits were either not achieved or in fact had negative impacts. Identified benefits are described and we reveal that more consideration should be given to how these benefits interrelate and how they build community capitals to foster their realization in citizen science water projects. Additionally, we describe identified negative impacts showing they were seldom considered though they may not be uncommon and should be borne in mind when implementing citizen science. Given the time and effort commitment made by citizen scientists for the benefit of research, there is a need for further study of participants and communities involved in citizen science applications to water, particularly in low-income regions, to ensure both researchers and communities are benefitting.

show abstract

Landslide susceptibility analysis based on citizen reports

Rohan

Wondolowski

Shelef

2021

Earth Surf Processes Landf

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Landslide susceptibility estimates are essential for reducing the risk posed by landslides to social and economic well‐being. However, estimates of landslide susceptibility depend on reliable landslide inventories whose production requires extensive field or remote sensing efforts. Further, most inventories are not updated through time and thus may not capture the influence of changes in climate and/or land use. Inventories based on citizen reports of landslide occurrence, have the potential to overcome these limitations. Such an inventory can be produced from citizen reports to a 311‐phone and online system, a nationwide database that updates real‐time and records reported landslides location and timing. Whereas this landslide inventory is promising, it has not used for landslide susceptibility analyses and may be associated with spatial uncertainties and reporting biases. In this study we explore the use of 311‐based landslide inventory for landslide susceptibility estimates in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, where landslide risk is among the highest in the nation. We compare the 311‐based inventory to field‐validated inventories through a multi‐pronged approach that combines field validation of 311‐reported landslides, probabilistic analysis of the association between landslides and the underlying topographic and geologic factors, and spatial filtering. Our results show that: (a) approximately 70% of the 311‐reported landslides are associated with an identifiable landslide in the field; (b) the spatial uncertainty of the 311‐reported landslides is 104 ± 25 m; (c) 311‐reported landslides differ from other inventories in that they are primarily associated with proximity to roads, however, field‐correction of 311‐reported landslide locations rectifies this anomaly; (d) a simple spatial filter, scaled by the uncertainty in location as determined from a subset of the 311‐data, can increase the consistency between the 311‐reported inventory and field‐validated inventories. These results suggest that 311‐based landslide inventories can improve susceptibility estimates at a relatively low cost and high temporal resolution.

show abstract

Building Resilience to Chronic Landslide Hazard Through Citizen Science

Abstract: Informant: Nah. What can we do? Our houses are there so we cannot just leave everything and go to another place as we do not own land in other place! So even if we have to die, we will live and die in our own house; that is what we think.

Cited by 26 publications

References 102 publications

Applying Citizen Science for Sustainable Development: Rainfall Monitoring in Western Nepal

Applying Citizen Science for Sustainable Development: Rainfall Monitoring in Western Nepal

The benefits and negative impacts of citizen science applications to water as experienced by participants and communities

Landslide susceptibility analysis based on citizen reports

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About