“Our environment is continuously changing and we often notice small difference where we live or visit. This page gives us all the opportunity to inform and be informed of such changes thus making environmental information more accessible.
Share in the excitement of discovery!
HEALTH
HealthMap is an established global leader in utilizing online informal sources for disease outbreak monitoring and real-time surveillance of emerging public health threats. It delivers real-time intelligence on a broad range of emerging infectious diseases for a diverse audience including libraries, local health departments, governments, and international travelers. Outbreaks Near Me - Subscribe to the Mobile application Contribute to Disease Daily
Mosquito Alert - This data set has been created through the efforts of the Mosquito Alert team and the thousands of citizen scientists who have volunteered their energy and contributed reports on the Mosquito Alert platform. Participate Now
BIODIVERSITY
Biocaching is a concept under development and aims to be an educative gaming app, based on observing and taking pictures of species. A design goal is that the app will be easy to use, with tools to help the user identify the species, and fun, with a gaming concept that engages users over time. Biocaching will use open data from diverse sources, such as the Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre (NBIC), the Encyclopedia of Life, the Catalogue of Life and Wikipedia.
All observations collected by the Biocaching game will be forwarded to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), and will be freely available for use by both science and the society.
CyberTracker: From its origins with the Kalahari Bushmen, CyberTracker projects have been initiated to monitor gorillas in the Congo, snow leopards in the Himalayas, butterflies in Switzerland, the Sumatran rhino in Borneo, jaguars in Costa Rica, birds in the Amazon, wild horses in Mongolia, dolphins in California, marine turtles in the Pacific and whales in Antarctica. It will help capture observations on a daily basis and make it possible to visualize changes in the global ecosystem in real time.
ESRI Citizen Science Manager:presents one or more maps used to report observations of wild plants or animals. Users can anonymously submit new reports, review existing reports, and comment and vote on reports or observations submitted by other users. They also can authenticate with their social media or ArcGIS credentials and track the status of observations they have reported.
National Audubon Society aims to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth's biological diversity.
NatureWatch is a community that engages Canadians in collecting scientific information on nature to understand the changing environment.
The OpenTreeMap software by Azavea is an open source collaborative platform for crowdsourced tree inventory, ecosystem services calculations, urban forestry analysis, and community engagement.
Project Noah is a leading resource for nature exploration and documentation. Create a mission today and harness the power of their platform for your cause.
Recent research points to the widespread (but largely overlooked) protected area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD). In response, PADDDtracker.org is documenting the patterns, trends, causes, and consequences of PADDD. PADDDtracker.org allows you to learn about PADDD, track events and share your experiences with the world.
PADDDtracker.org is an initiative of the World Wildlife Fund.
The What’s Invasive app helps experts find Invasive species – which often threaten native plants and animals. It has been developed by the University of Georgia.
World Wide Views provides decision-makers with a unique insight into the global public opinion on complex governance issues that are debated and negotiated at global venues, such as the UN. See the 2015 World wide views on Climate and Energy. The 2016 project will focus on Biodiversity.
HYDRO-METEOROLOGY AND AIR QUALITY MEASUREMENTS
The Trans-African HydroMeteorological Observatory (TAHMO) aims to install a dense cost-effective network of 20,000 hydro-meteorological measuring stations in Africa, each one costing just $500. This network will measure all standard meteorological variables (rainfall, radiation, temperature, humidity, wind speed and wind direction). The data will be combined with models and satellite observations to obtain much more insight into the distribution of water and energy stocks and fluxes in Africa.
Air Quality Egg is a sensor system designed to allow anyone to collect very high resolution readings of NO2 and CO concentrations outside of their home.
Extreme Citizen Science Lab UCL/Mapping for Change has low cost Nitrogen Dioxide gas diffusion tubes which were distributed to communities in the city of London. The accumulated NO2 readings are then posted on a local area map on a website.
SmartCitizen helps answer questions like what are the levels of air pollution around your home or business? and what about noise pollution? and humidity?. It allows sharing of responses, comparisons with other places in your city to improve environment quality.
Citizen Sense in Goldsmiths, University of London includes access to data stories, videos showing the findings from the citizen monitoring activities related to air quality in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Public lab 'Open Air' initiative supports specific projects in four topic areas, Open Air, Open Water, Open Land and Civic Kits, in order to enable cohesive community collaboration across hardware, software, expertise, and locale.
Citi-Sense project shares objective and subjective information about air quality, and acoustic and thermal comfort.
Clean Air UK measures air pollution in UK neighborhoods.
Friends of the Earth is developing a kit you can use to monitor, avoid, and improve polluted air where you live.
Clean Air for London aims to achieve full compliance with WHO guidelines for air quality throughout London and elsewhere.
Clean Space measures the air you breathe – allowing you to see harmful pollution wherever and whenever you need to
AirSenseur aims to implement a low cost accurate air quality monitoring system to sample a set of chemical sensors, temperature, pressure and relative humidity.
SpeckSensor App allows users to get up-to-date Air Quality Index numbers for their current location to quickly see if the air they are breathing is healthy and how it compares to other sites.
Opal Survey infers air quality by observing its effects on lichens.
The Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program is an international science and education program that provides students and the public worldwide with the opportunity to participate in data collection and the scientific process, and contribute meaningfully to our understanding of the Earth system and global environment. Announced by the U.S. Government on Earth Day in 1994, GLOBE launched its worldwide implementation in 1995.
See the GLOBE Countries and Member's MapVideo: The GLOBE Process
OpenROV - mapping the world's oceans
An Underwater Drone for Everyone
Secchi is a mobile interface which encourages mariners to participate in a global study of the phytoplankton in the sea. Phytoplankton support the marine food chain and scientists need help understanding the effects of climate change on their habitats.
POLLUTION
Germany’s Cosalux GmbH developed the Loss of the Night app to help scientists measure and understand the effects of light pollution on health, environment and society. Users take part in a worldwide citizen science project—called GLOBE at Night— by mapping light pollution and star visibility.
NoiseTube was created with the purpose of turning smartphones into mobile noise level meters. The NoiseTube research project began in 2008 at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris in partnership with the Free University of Brussels to study the public’s exposure to noise in everyday environments.
Plume Labs, through their Plume Air Report, lets Londoners track average pollution levels in their city. In March 2016, they launched the first ever flock of pollution-monitoring pigeons to map pollution in the city - Pigeon Air Patrol. Pigeons are equipped with little backpacks carrying ultra-light pollution sensing technologies to track air quality all around London.
The Participatory night sky quality monitoring project (BuioMetria Partecipativa) started from Italy in 2008. It promotes collection of data on light pollution using a Sky Quality Meter and fixed SQM stations producing high-quality time series light pollution. Since January 2013 Attivarti.org represents Italy in a research network involving almost 40 organizations in 18 countries, funded within the European COST programme. To participate, visit the website or send an e-mail.
The 'Pollution Map' app (available for both iOS and Android) has been developed by Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs and uses data from some 15,000 factories throughout China that are now required to report emissions to local officials and the Environment Ministry on an hourly basis.
Commons Lab within the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars is a Federal database of USA government sponsored crowdsourcing and citizen science projects. Their mission is to mobilize public participation and innovation in science, technology, and policy through research and development.
European Citizen Science Association is an association supported by organizations from over 17 EU countries and beyond, who are working together with environmental regulators to encourage the growth of the Citizen Science movement in Europe and internationally. ECSA members cover different fields, such as biological science, do-it-yourself approaches, environmental mapping, social sciences and more.
Österreich forscht provides an inventory of citizen science projects in Austria.
Scistarter's citizen science platform. Their database of more than 1,100 citizen science projects will enable discovery, organization, and greater participation in citizen science.
Find a project!
Citizen science happens when ordinary people study the world around them and send in the data they collect to scientists. Anyone can do citizen science!
Special thanks to SciStarter for sharing their project database. Visit their site for advanced searches.
Click here to create a SciStarter account and add a project to the SciStarter database!
SPATIAL PROGRAMS
CartoDB is an online mapping software that uses visualization, collaboration, and analysis to present citizen science data in a simple and beautiful web interface. It offers dynamic rendering and geo-temporal visualizations of real-time maps that show data as it happens. The strength of the platform is in enabling users to easily implement analytically robust data driven solutions. Showcased below are a few examples of maps in action. More examples of maps developed using CartoDB can be found here
what3words is a unique combination of just 3 words that identifies a 3mx3m square, anywhere on the planet. It helps deliver business efficiencies, drive growth and help the social & economic development of countries.
Example of use: A UN-ASIGN application has been developed by AnsuR for crowd sourcing geo-tagged photos and text from areas affected by large humanitarian disasters to the United Nations entity UNITAR/UNOSAT.
Download app iTunes or Android.
WASTE
Let’s Do It! is a civic led movement which began in Estonia in 2008 when 50,000 people gathered to clean up the entire country in just five hours. It is now an international movement with 112 countries working together, engaging over 13 million participants. Help clean up illegally dumped solid waste and keep our planet clean!
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Esri’s ArcGIS Citizen Science Resources: Blogs and Twitter.
Extreme Citizen Science is a situated, bottom-up practice that takes into account local needs, practices and culture and works with broad networks of people to design and build new devices and knowledge creation processes that can transform the world.
The Eye on Earth Summit 2015, took place from 6-8 October, it addressed the profound impact that rapid economic and industrial development has on natural resources, biodiversity and consumption patterns around the world. These global challenges require international collaborative action to find transformative solutions that span political boundaries and help secure a sustainable future for all. Follow the Eye on Earth Special Initiatives.