Global Mapping of Citizen Science Projects for Disaster Risk Reduction

Citizen science for disaster risk reduction (DRR) holds huge promise and has demonstrated success in advancing scientific knowledge, providing early warning of hazards, and contributed to the assessment and management of impacts. While many existing studies focus on the performance of specific citizen science examples, this paper goes beyond this approach to present a systematic global mapping of citizen science used for DRR in order to draw out broader insights across diverse methods, initiatives, hazards and country contexts. The systematic mapping analyzed a total of 106 cases of citizen science applied to DRR across all continents. Unlike many existing reviews of citizen science initiatives, relevance to the disaster risk context led us to ‘open up’ our mapping to a broader definition of what might constitute citizen science, including participatory research and narrative-based approaches. By taking a wider view of citizen science and opening up to other disciplinary practices as valid ways of knowing risks and hazards, we also capture these alternative examples and discuss their relevance for aiding effective decision-making around risk reduction. Based on this analysis we draw out lessons for future research and practice of citizen science for DRR including the need to: build interconnections between disparate citizen science methods and practitioners; address multi-dimensionality within and across hazard cycles; and develop principles and frameworks for evaluating citizen science initiatives that not only ensure scientific competence but also attend to questions of equity, responsibility and the empowerment of those most vulnerable to disaster risk

Mobile services for green living

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Information Management, specialization in Geographic Information SystemsUrban cycling is a sustainable transport mode that many cities are promoting. However, few cities are taking advantage of geospatial technologies to represent and analyse behavioural patterns and barriers faced during cycling. This thesis is within the fields of geoinformatics and serious games, and the motivation came from our desire to help both citizens and cities to better understand cyclist behaviour and mobility patterns. We attempted to learn more about the impact of gamified strategies on engagement with cycling, the reasons for choosing between mobile cycling applications and the way such applications would provide commuting information. Furthermore, we explored the potential benefits of offering tools to build decision-making for mobility more transparent, to increase cycling data availability, and to analyse commuting patterns. In general, we found our research useful to enhance green living actions by increasing citizens’ willingness to commute by bicycle or communicating cycling conditions in cities. For urban cycling, data coming from mobile phones can provide a better assessment and enrich the analysis presented in traditional mobility plans. However, the diversity of current mobile applications targeting cyclists does not provide useful data for analysing commuter (inner-city, non-sporting) cycling. Just a few cyclists are adopting these applications as part of their commuting routine, while on the other hand cities are lacking a valuable source of constantly updated cycling information helpful to understand cycling patterns and the role of bicycles in urban transport. This thesis analyses how the incentives of location-based games or geo-games might increase urban cycling engagement and, through this engagement, crowdsource cycling data collection to allow cities to better comprehend cycling patterns. Consequently, the experiment followed a between-groups design to measure the impact of virtual rewards provided by the Cyclist Geo-c application on the levels of intention, satisfaction, and engagement with cycling. Then, to identify the frictions which potentially inhibit bicycle commuting, we analysed the bicycle trips crowdsourced with the geo-game. Our analysis relied on a hexagonal grid of 30-metre cell side to aggregate trip trajectories, calculate the friction intensity and locate the frictions. The thesis reports on the results of an experiment which involved a total of 57 participants in three European cities: M¨unster (Germany), Castell ´o (Spain), and Valletta (Malta). We found participants reported higher satisfaction and engagement with cycling during the experiment in the collaboration condition. However, we did not find a significant impact on the participants’ worldview when it comes to the intentions to start or increase cycling. The results support the use of collaboration-based rewards in the design of game-based applications to promote urban cycling. Furthermore, we validated a procedure to identify not only the cyclists’ preferred streets but also the frictions faced during cycling analysing the crowdsourced trips. We successfully identified 284 places potentially having frictions: 71 in M¨unster, Germany; 70 in Castell ´ o, Spain; and 143 in Valletta, Malta. At such places, participants recorded trip segments at speeds below 5 Km/h indicating a deviation from a hypothetical scenario with a constant cycling speed. This thesis encompasses the cyclist and city perspectives of offering virtual incentives in geo-games and crowdsourcing cycling data collection to better comprehend cycling conditions in cities. We also compiled a set of tools and recommendations for researchers, practitioners, mobile developers, urban planners and cyclist associations interested in fostering sustainable transport and the use of bicycles

The Lens of the Lab: Design Challenges in Scientific Software

Playful and gameful design could improve the quality of scientific software. However, literature about gamification methods for that particular type of software is presently scarce. As an effort to fill that gap, this paper introduces a set of design challenges and opportunities that should be informative to professionals approaching the area. This research is based on literature review on scientific software development, also contemplating material on the gamification of science, software, and work. From the gathered information, we identify, map, and discuss key aspects of development and use of professional scientific software. Those findings are, then, formatted as a Design Lens—a set of questions designers should ask themselves to gain insight, from a particular perspective, on their work. We propose the Lens of the Lab as a design lens to support designers working in collaboration with scientists and software engineers in professional scientific software initiatives

Citizen Science: Reducing Risk and Building Resilience to Natural Hazards

Natural hazards are becoming increasingly frequent within the context of climate change—making reducing risk and building resilience against these hazards more crucial than ever. An emerging shift has been noted from broad-scale, top-down risk and resilience assessments toward more participatory, community-based, bottom-up approaches. Arguably, non-scientist local stakeholders have always played an important role in risk knowledge management and resilience building. Rapidly developing information and communication technologies such as the Internet, smartphones, and social media have already demonstrated their sizeable potential to make knowledge creation more multidirectional, decentralized, diverse, and inclusive (Paul et al., 2018). Combined with technologies for robust and low-cost sensor networks, various citizen science approaches have emerged recently (e.g., Haklay, 2012; Paul et al., 2018) as a promising direction in the provision of extensive, real-time information for risk management (as well as improving data provision in data-scarce regions). It can serve as a means of educating and empowering communities and stakeholders that are bypassed by more traditional knowledge generation processes. This Research Topic compiles 13 contributions that interrogate the manifold ways in which citizen science has been interpreted to reduce risk against hazards that are (i) water-related (i.e., floods, hurricanes, drought, landslides); (ii) deep-earth-related (i.e., earthquakes and volcanoes); and (iii) responding to global environmental change such as sea-level rise. We have sought to analyse the particular failures and successes of natural hazards-related citizen science projects: the objective is to obtain a clearer understanding of “best practice” in a citizen science context