Shut up and take my environmental data! A study on ICT enabled citizen science practices, participation approaches and challenges

Abstract

Citizen Science initiatives have been around since the 20th century in numerous fields, from astronomy to health monitoring. In recent years, social changes mediated by the development of information and communication technologies have pivoted new types of civic actions, which have enabled an expansion in the breath of citizen science applications. This civic technology has become a genuine interactive and inclusive opportunity for engaging citizens in the continuous collection of data relevant to science, governance, businesses, communal living, as well as individual concerns. This article presents the practices, trends and challenges of 108 ICT enabled citizen science projects. In addition, we present a palette for participation in ICT enabled citizen science that depicts the shapes civic participation is currently taking in different contexts. We discuss the potential uses of this palette for improving the engineering of ICT citizen science platforms to better fit the needs of volunteers and build opportunities for active engagement.

From Data Literacy to Co-design Environmental Monitoring Innovations and Civic Action

“…In the last decade, civic technologies such as citizen sensing (also known as ICT enabled citizen science or crowdsensing) have been a popular means for empowering citizen participation and citizen engagement [1]. Specially the civic technologies have popular in context of management and governance of cities, by augmenting both formal and informal aspects of civic life, government and public services [2]. The up shift in popularity has definitely drawn part of it suggest from global digitalization and sustainability trends [3,4], the new level of awareness in general population against unnecessary waste and improvement in waste processing capabilities of municipalities [5], growth in public -private sector collaboration [6], and miniaturization and quality improvement in IT and sensor technologies [7].…”

SENSEI: Harnessing Community Wisdom for Local Environmental Monitoring in Finland

“…In this paper, we describe the process or orchestration of this initiative and present key reflections from it. [10].…”

Software Engineering in Civic Tech A Case Study about Code for Ireland

“…While extant literature seeks to understand the effect of technology on people [3,6] and to orchestrate civic engagement Figure 1. Palette of Public Participation in Civic Technology adapted from [4] [7,8], research in the context of software engineering practices in civic technologies remains under-explored [9,10].…”

“…FixMyStreet (data provider); collaborate with authorities to monitor issues -predefined by authorities -(collaborators); co-create solutions for issues of shared concern (co-creator); ideate civic action e.g. Code for Ireland (ideator); or, disrupt established processes by passive non-participation or negative participation (disruptor) [4].…”