Project Activity System for Citizen Science Apps
In many Citizen Science projects, there are geographical location-related events or activities to interact with as a participant. Such activities can, for example, be simply a workshop taking place or something more permanent like an exhibition, a nature trail, or a project-related area that needs highlighting. With the integrated system called "Project Activities" on the SPOTTERON Citizen Science App platform, there is a full toolkit available for all projects.
The Project Activity system has grown over time in a flexible and multi-use tool, allowing projects to set up and publish geographical events, areas of interest, transects, or trails. The team of each project on the SPOTTERON Citizen Science App platform has access to a Data Administration Interface, which allows, besides data management and data exports and integrated communication and outreach tools, to create new Project Activities independently. The interface enables the set-up of titles, time and dates, descriptions, location names and display options, as well as the upload of cover images for in-App presentation. Each project on SPOTTERON can self.manage their own Project Activities and set up new entries, which appear in the Citizen Science Apps without major delays. This makes the Proejct Acitivtiy system a flexible and easy-to-use hub for geospatial information display, and for enabling new particiaption options to support the goals and data outcomes of a project. Projects can choose from a variatey of geo-spatial types for their activies, from points to circle areas to even custom point clouds, lines and polygon shapes.
Geo-spatial options available for Project Activities cover:
- Point events & activities: for example a workshop or a meeting place on a given address
- Circle-based area events & activities, like e.g. an area of interest for gathering observation from, from, or an event like an natural disaster to report feedback from
- Geo-JSONs: project activities can be freely defined by using a Geo-JSON, which is a standard for geographical definitions in text form. Geo-JSONs support point clouds, lines and paths, as well as polygons, that can be drawn on the map and used in a Project Activity. Common use-cases are transects, walking tracks or nature trails, geographical areas following natural features or regional borders, or natural habitat extends for protected areas.
With the set of geographical options to represent a Project Activity in Citizen Science Apps, the system has a wide range of project-specific applications and can extend both data collection and community interaction or guidance in Citizen Science.
Examples for Project Activities in Citizen Science, Monitoring, and Public Engagement Apps on the SPOTTERON platform:
Various Citizen Science projects on SPOTTERON utilize the highly flexible and extendable Project Activities system for their project goals, from display of information to linking data contributions by participants to geographical routes or areas. Furthermore, we have developed data connectors to synchronize external data sources for automatically creating new Project Activities and making participation options available for App users and enabling an additonal layer of knowledge and participation.
These examples show how Project Activities can be flexible put to use in Citizen Science Apps. Depending on what kind of information and activities there are in a Citizen Science project, the system offers a broad spectrum of possibilities. In its core, the Project Activities make it possible to show geospatial overlays and let users interact with them, as well as the submission of data linked to the entries. With a range of additional configuration options, list sorting by each user's own location and the display of a cover image, headline, time ranges, description text, and detail information, Project Activities bring an easy-to-use option for all Citizen Science Apps and Monitoring tools, running on the SPOTTERON platform, to integrate a dynamic geospatial layer.
Each project team on the SPOTTERON platform can create new Project Activities on the fly inthe Data Adminsitration Interface. A dedicated section allows the set up and publishing of Project Activities, alongside the upload of the cover image, definiton of a start and end time, and multilanguage capability for all text elements and the title.
Citizen Science and Community engagement projects utilizing Project Activities in their Apps:
ClimateWatch Australia
In ClimateWatch Australia by Earthwatch, the project's core revolves around nature trails across the country, at which participants from citizens to school classes contribute observations about animal behaviour, occurrences and observe various plant species. When submitting a Spot in the Citizen Science App, participants can link it to the nature trail on which they are walking on. The trails are also available as a list, sorted by the distance to the current location of a user, making them directly accessible. The ClimateWatch trails Project Activities feature additional information about the location, trail's history or themes, and participant can use QR Codes to open trails via scanning the code with their camera. The project is also collaborating with the island-state Vatuatu, which is one of the places inflicted most by Climate Change.
Crowdwater
The long-running Crowdwater hydrology Citizen Science project by ETH Zurich in Switzerland has not only grown into a global spanning Citizen Science project, with sub-partnerships with other institutions in place. For the first of these co-use partnerships, the project has set up a visible representation of watershed areas on the map. The watershed areas are, as any Project Activity on the map, clickable and offer a range of information about the watershed area and its impacts. The sub-partner in the project have localized access to the data of their own region via the SPOTTERON Project internationalization toolkit, and can also set up Project Activities like new watersheds, but also events and workshop independently. In projects open for collaboration, the Project Activitiy system brings more options not only to the project coordinator/lead, but also to sub-partners for their own regiuons or countries.
COSEA
The open for collaboration App Toolkit COSEA for marine and coastal observations is a combined outcome of the two Horizon Europe projects EFFECTIVE and TRANSEATION, in which SPOTTERON is an active partner and task leader/work package leader. A core principle of Horizon Europe and most other research funding programs is the establishment of pilot areas, in which the research of the science project takes place and solutions and results are tested. In COSEA, the involved projects are studying effects in Marine Protected Areas (MPA), which are visualized on the map in the Citizen Science App Toolkit as Geo-Shapes, utilizing the Project Activity system for the display of map overlays and additional information about each area for the public.
UrbanBetter Cityzens
UrbanBetter, an Africa-led global social enterprise, is a data-driven advocacy movement, urban health practice and learning platform with a mission to accelerate healthy sustainable development in urban(ising) settings worldwide. Together, we have developed a system, that synchronizes public running events and their routes from UrbanBetter's servers as Project Activities to the SPOTTERON infrastructure. The running events are available as a current distance-sorted list to join. UrbanBetter has an additional structure of run leaders and runners. The first provide portable air quality sensors to run participants for data recording during the event. The sensor data is then compiled by UrbanBetter, and a data visualization for the results is available to the participants after the running event. Alongside the run, participants are also invited to contribute data via the mobile App for e.g. obstacles, urban factors and feedback. This interaction between health promotion and air quality recording makes the project unique, and the Project Activities system provides the support for running route display and linking the observational data points to the run itself.
Quakewatch
There are many minor earthquakes happening daily around the globe. In QuakeWatch, a nationally focussed but internationally available project by the government institution "geosphere austria", Project Activities are used to display earthquakes on the map. The quakes are automatically synchronized from the servers of "geosphere austria" into the Project Activity system and displayed in per-Richter-scale colouring and dynamic radius calculation based on the earthquake's strength and depth. Citizens can select earthquakes and contribute reports about the felt strength, building damage, psychological aspects and more information as spot uploads on their location. The data is used to better assess the impact of natural disasters on small and large infrastructure, and how people feel and react to earthquakes in real circumstances. Integrating and constantly updated external data source, pushing new earthquake events to the project's Citizen Science and Reporting App creates a platform, in which users can give their immediate feedback and contribute their own observation and experiences of current events.
Streetmind
While in the Horizon Europe-funded project Streetmind, the main participant group are medical cohorts, giving reports about the impact of their environment on their mental health, there are also partner studies involved that explore the impact of physical activities on psychological wellbeing. As an environmental health project, StreetMind uses Project Activities to put locations on the map, on which users are incented to do a physical task like doing a 10 minute workout. To support that goal, we have developed a system add-on, that integrates live GEO locations for mobile devices in the Citizen Science App, we call "Geo Triggers". When a user gets near to an existing Project Activity with a GEO Trigger, the Smartphone receives a push notification with sound and vibration that there is an available project location nearby and invited to do a short physical assignment. Afterwards, the participant can give feedback on their emotional state and feelings in reflection. The combination of Project activities, which can be created self-managed by the project's team, and GEO Triggers, that alert participants about activity location in their current vicinity, makes a powerful combination.
Interested in using Project Activities in your Citizen Science App?
As part of the platform's "Project Ecosystem", each project on the SPOTTERON App platform can out-of-the-box use and publish Project Activities without any additional development costs. We are happy to support your Citizen Science project from the start, and build your interactive and feature-rich toolkit based on your inputs, requirements, and goals. Please reach out to us if you want to schedule a call for a live demonstration, and to talk about your own Citizen Science, Monitoring or Public Engagement project:
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