Citizen science involves members of the public in scientific work, often collaborating with professional scientists. Luigi Ceccaroni discusses the role of citizen science in environmental monitoring and management. Technological trends like the internet and smartphones have enabled new forms of citizen science where citizens can collect and share observational data. Machine learning techniques can be applied to data from citizen science projects to forecast changes in environmental indicators. Ceccaroni examines several case studies that demonstrate how low-resolution data from citizens can still provide useful information when analyzed statistically.

1. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
The role of citizen science
in environment management
Forecasting based on
citizens’ observatories
Luigi Ceccaroni (1000001 Labs)
3rd International Marine Protected Areas Congress, Marseille (France), October 22, 2013Università di Bologna – Scienze Ambientali, Ravenna (Italy), December 17, 2015, 2 pm
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2. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
• Knowledge of the field of citizen science and current
trends that influence it
• Understand the principles and practical aspects of a
citizen science project
• Learn about data quality in citizen science
Learning outcomes
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3. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
• Current activities in the area of citizen science online
and offline
• Typology of engagement in citizen science
• Citizen Science in a historical perspective and
underlying trends
• The case for low resolution in environmental
monitoring
• Forecasting based on citizens’ observatories
Content: an introduction to citizen science
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4. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Acquisition, processing, delivery: a new way
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5. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
• Citizen science involving people on training cruises, on
sailing races, on holiday (e.g., scuba diving) in data
collection
Citizens’ participation via smart devices
Tall Ship Regatta
21st Sept. - 4th October 2013:
Barcelona - Toulon - La Spezia
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6. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Citizens’ participation via smart devices
Barcelona World
Race
2013-2015: around
the world sailboat
race
• Citizen science involving people on training cruises, on
sailing races, on holiday (e.g., scuba diving) in data
collection
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7. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Citizens’ participation via smart devices
• Citizen science involving people on training cruises, on
sailing races, on holiday (e.g., scuba diving) in data
collection
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8. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Information acquisition
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9. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Information delivery (Citclops)
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10. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Information delivery (Citclops)
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11. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Information delivery (WaterWatch)
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12. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Information delivery (WaterWatch)
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13. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Information delivery (Citclops)
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14. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Information delivery (Citclops)
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15. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
• Water-color, oil-spill, river-status measurement
• Water transparency via phone pictures and
Secchi disc
• Retrieval of sensor measurements from low-
cost moorings
Applications
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16. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
• Improvement of scuba-diving activities
• Best beaches’ ranking
• Early-warning systems for HABs and bio-
chemical hazards
Applications
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17. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
• Andromeda
• Citclops
• CITI-SENSE
• Coastwatch
• COBWEB
• SeaWatchers
• Socientize
• WaterWatch
• WeSenseIt
European citizen-science projects: other examples
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18. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Coastwatch and Citclops
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19. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
SeaWatchers
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20. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
COBWEB, CITI-SENSE, WeSenseIt, Omniscientis
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21. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Andromeda project
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22. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Andromeda project
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23. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
citizen science n. scientific work undertaken by
members of the general public, often in collaboration
with or under the direction of professional scientists and
scientific institutions.
citizen scientist n. (a) a scientist whose work is
characterized by a sense of responsibility to serve the
best interests of the wider community (now rare); (b) a
member of the general public who engages in scientific
work, often in collaboration with or under the direction
of professional scientists and scientific institutions; an
amateur scientist.
Citizen Science (Oxford English Dictionary 2014)
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24. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Indicators (of environment quality/perturbation) can be
measured by citizens in a more or less
voluntary,
active or
conscious way.
Typology of engagement in citizen science
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25. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
• Involvement of citizens in: archaeology, astronomy,
ornithology, conservation, meteorology…
• No recognition, viewing volunteers as ‘untrustworthy’
contributors, that are better replaced by automated
instruments
Historical perspective: the era of professional
science (late 1800s – 1900s)
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26. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
• Societal trends:
• Education and qualifications
• Leisure
• Sharing economies / peer production systems
• Technological trends:
• Internet access (broadband)
• Mobile devices
• Collaborative Web
• DIY electronics
Historical perspective: the era of opening science
(2000s)
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27. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
• World (data by UNESCO): 95 M – 199 M
Increased level of education and qualifications
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28. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
• Italy (data by UNESCO): 1.8 M - 2.0 M - 1.9 M
• Spain (data by UNESCO): 1.8 M - 1.8 M - 2.0 M
Increased level of education and qualifications
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29. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
• Italy (data by OECD): 1850 - 1730
• Spain (data by OECD): 1750 - 1690
Increased level of leisure
1650
1700
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2000
2050
2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016
Israel
Italy
Spain
OECD countries
Average Annual Hours Worked (per person)
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30. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
• In many areas, especially in production and sharing of
information
Increased level of sharing economies
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31. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Increased (fixed) broadband affordability
Data by the International
Telecommunication Union
(ITU)
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32. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Increased (mobile) broadband affordability
Data by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
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33. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Increased mobile-subscription affordability
Data by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
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34. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Collaborative Web
A map of the world, created by people like you and free to use under an open license
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35. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
DIY electronics
Citclops’s KdUINO monitoring buoy based on Arduino
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36. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
The case for low resolution
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with Jaume Piera

37. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Monitoring: resolution, accuracy
μM = 10−6 mol/dm3 = 10−3 mol/m3
In situ ultraviolet
spectrophotometer to
measure nutrients
Temporal and spatial
variability?
High accuracy
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38. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Monitoring: frequency
1201009080 130 140110 150
20
15
5
10
25
0
Nitrate (μM)
Julian days
1 sample every month
(at 10 am on the first day of the month)
1 sample every week
(at 10 am on the first day of the week)
Monterey Bay, California
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39. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
The sunlight cycle
30 35 40
0
50
100
150
200
250
Julian days
Sunlight
intensity
(W/m2h)
Day
Night
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40. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Monitoring: frequency
30 35 40
0
50
100
150
200
250
Julian days
Sunlight
intensity
(W/m2h)
1 sample every week (at 4 pm on the first day)
This is a typical
frequency in
biological
domains
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41. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Monitoring: frequency
30 35 40
0
50
100
150
200
250
Julian days
Sunlight
intensity
(W/m2h)
1 sample every day (at 4 pm)
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42. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Monitoring: frequency
30 35 40
0
50
100
150
200
250
Julian days
Sunlight
intensity
(W/m2h)
2 samples every day (at 4 pm and 4 am)
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43. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
1.very high
2.high
3.low
4.very low
5.no sunlight
Monitoring: resolution
vs.
Questionnaire to citizens
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44. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Monitoring: resolution
0
50
100
150
200
250
Julian days
Sunlight
intensity
(W/m2h)
1 sample every day (at 4 pm) Sunlight
intensity
25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41
very high
high
low
very low
no sunlight
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45. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Forecasting based on citizens’ observatories
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with Filip Velickovski

47. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
• Extract data from
source
• Convert to data
array
Parsing
• Convert data into
feature vectors +
target value
Feature
preparation • Select feature
variables,
amount of past
time points
Feature
Selection
• Train and test a
set of models
(decision trees,
SVM, Bayesian)
Model
selection • Evaluate best
model on unseen
test set
Final
evaluation
Machine-learning pipeline
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48. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Converting to three class classification problem
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49. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Using mean daily values (example: TSM)
6th May30th Apr 24th May12th May 18th May
2014

50. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Using mean daily values, sometimes few data points
(example: TSM)
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18th Dec14th Dec 22nd Dec 26th Dec
2013

51. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Short-term correlation to tide (Dominant semi-diurnal
lunar tidal component (M2) with a period of 12:25 h)
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28th Sep 1st Oct 4th Oct
2013

52. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Knowledge coming from pre-processing
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• Clear relation among color, tides, and other drivers:
wind (which steers both waves and currents),
river/sluice discharge and biology
• Short-term forecasting (within a tidal period): not
possible without de-tiding the signals
• Longer-term forecasting: possibly improved by de-
tiding the signals

53. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
Feature and target-variable preparation

54. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
FU
Chl-a
TSM
Feature
configuration
Number of examples for training
ML
technique
Support Vector Machine
• C (soft-margin) : 1.0
• Kernel : radial basis
Distribution of target FU classes
415
stabledecrease increase
27% 48%
Blind predictor
benchmark
48%
25%
Accuracy (10-fold
cross- validation)
53%
Wave height
Forecasting
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55. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
FU
Chl-a
TSM
Feature
configuration
Number of examples for training
ML
technique
Random Forest
• n_trees: 10
359
33 % 32 %
35%
35 % 52 %
Wave height
55
Blind predictor
benchmark
Distribution of target FU classes
stabledecrease increase
Accuracy (10-fold
cross- validation)
Forecasting

56. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
FU
Chl-a
TSM
Feature
configuration
Number of examples for training
ML
technique
Decision Tree
• max depth: 10
345
34 % 31 %
35%
35 % 45 %
Wave height
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Blind predictor
benchmark
Distribution of target FU classes
stabledecrease increase
Accuracy (10-fold
cross- validation)
Forecasting

57. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
http://www.1000001labs.org/
http://www.citclops.eu/
http://eyeonwater.org/
http://ecsa.citizen-science.net/
http://www.coastwatch.org/
http://creekwatch.researchlabs.ibm.com/
http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/eap/fw_riv/index.html
http://projectbaseline.org
http://crowd.cs.umass.edu/
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_science
http://senseable.mit.edu/
http://research.cens.ucla.edu/aquatic/
http://www.secchidipin.org/
http://www.earthobservations.org/geo_me_201211_geo9_ec.shtml
http://www.nurp.noaa.gov/Spotlight/Observatory.htm
Resources
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58. Luigi Ceccaroni
The role of citizen science in environment management
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