The ECSA European Citizen Science Conference is Europe's major meeting point every two years for actors and stakeholders in Citizen Science. In 2022, it takes place in Berlin, Germany, and we look forward to traveling to the North of Europe for Citizen Science!
This year's conference motto, "Citizen Science for Planetary Health" reflects the understanding that our health and civilization rely on thriving natural systems and how we can protect those in these challenging times.
Planetary health has three challenges:
by ECSA
1) Challenges to the imagination: over-reliance on GDP as a measure of human progress, failure to consider future health and environmental harms alongside current gains, and the disproportionate impact of these harms on the poor and people in developing countries.
2) Research and information challenges: an increasingly molecular approach to human wellbeing that ignores the social and environmental context, a historical lack of transdisciplinary research and funding within the health community, and an unwillingness or inability to deal with uncertainty in the decision-making process.
3) Governance challenges: how governments and institutions recognize and respond to threats, especially when faced with uncertainties, pooled common resources, and time lags between action and effect.
The ECSA Conference gathers Citizen Science stakeholders, researchers, educators, and other CS actors from all across Europe and the world every second year. And for sure, SPOTTERON will be part of the Citizen Science Conference this year, too.
Posters and Citizen Science Projects
We have not one but two accepted contributions at the conference in the poster session. One poster introduces the technical aspects and services, which are the backbone of a Citizen Science App, by following an observation of a butterfly by a user recorded on a smartphone and how the data entry gets through the IT infrastructure and the various technical services involved. The second poster presents the effects of integrating a digital social community in Citizen Science Apps and toolkits, showing how communication and user interactions foster motivation, participation frequency, and even data quality. Visit us during the poster session, and let's chat about how digital apps and communities can increase the impact and reach of Citizen Science projects!
We are also represented in various projects at the conference that uses the SPOTTERON Citizen Science platform. The Horizon Europe / 2020 project "YouCount - youth citizen science," in which we are a partner in the consortium, has a presentation slot. We are looking forward to the presentation and feedback! Look for "Interactive Session 8: Empowerment and innovation through co-creative youth citizen social science - An interactive session organized by the H2020 YouCount project" on the 6th of October at 4:15 pm in the conference program, right after having some coffee and cake!
Also, you can find other Citizen Science and User Engagement projects at the ECSA conference 2022 that utilize the SPOTTERON App Platform. For example, "SpiderSpotter," which runs Citizen Science Apps for arachnology observations and further engages the public in data analysis with the platform's "Data Analysis Toolkit", will be at the conference. You can also listen to Daniel Dörler from "Project Roadkill," who presents their multi-stakeholder approach to improving amphibian conservation in Austria.
Hands-on Citizen Science Apps & Tools
With a suitcase full of devices for hands-on experience, we will have a table to showcase various projects live at the conference. You can try Citizen Science Apps and Web Applications in detail and see the wide range of App functionalities available for every project on the platform via the SPOTTERON Feature Ecosystem in action. We are happy to take a close look at already running Citizen Science projects, too, if you like to have feedback on technical aspects or the protection of the digital protection privacy of participants.
See you at the ECSA Conference 2022!