Onto new horizons:Insights from the WeObserve project to strengthen the awareness, acceptability and sustainability of Citizen Observatories in Europe

WeObserve delivered the first European-wide Citizen Observatory (CO) knowledge platform to share best practices, to address challenges and to inform practitioners, policy makers and funders of COs. We present key insights from WeObserve activities into leveraging challenges to create interlinked solutions, connecting with international frameworks and groups, advancing the field through communities of practice and practitioner networks, and fostering an enabling environment for COs. We also discuss how the new Horizon Europe funding programme can help to further advance the CO concept, and vice versa, how COs can provide a suitable mechanism to support the ambitions of Horizon Europe

Mapping citizen science contributions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a vision for achieving a sustainable future. Reliable, timely, comprehensive, and consistent data are critical for measuring progress towards, and ultimately achieving, the SDGs. Data from citizen science represent one new source of data that could be used for SDG reporting and monitoring. However, information is still lacking regarding the current and potential contributions of citizen science to the SDG indicator framework. Through a systematic review of the metadata and work plans of the 244 SDG indicators, as well as the identification of past and ongoing citizen science initiatives that could directly or indirectly provide data for these indicators, this paper presents an overview of where citizen science is already contributing and could contribute data to the SDG indicator framework. The results demonstrate that citizen science is “already contributing” to the monitoring of 5 SDG indicators, and that citizen science “could contribute” to 76 indicators, which, together, equates to around 33%. Our analysis also shows that the greatest inputs from citizen science to the SDG framework relate to SDG 15 Life on Land, SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG 3 Good Health and Wellbeing, and SDG 6 Clean Water and Sanitation. Realizing the full potential of citizen science requires demonstrating its value in the global data ecosystem, building partnerships around citizen science data to accelerate SDG progress, and leveraging investments to enhance its use and impact

The LandSense Innovation Challenge

The LandSense project aims to build an innovative citizen observatory for Land Use & Land Cover (LULC) monitoring, by connecting citizens with Earth Observation (EO) data to transform current approaches to environmental decision making. Through EO-driven mobile and web applications, LandSense promotes citizens to not only play a key role in environmental monitoring, but also to be directly involved in the co-creation of such applications. Currently within the EU’s EO monitoring framework, especially in the domain of LULC dynamics, there is a need for low-cost methods for acquiring high quality in-situ data to create timely, accurate and well-validated data products. LandSense aims to disrupt the EO data economy by creating marketable solutions that can provide a step-change in LULC monitoring activities both within and beyond Europe. In order to promote and stimulate the fast adoption of the project outcomes, the consortium proposes organization of the LandSense Innovation Challenge: Finals at the ECSA Conference 2020. This interactive session would facilitate collaboration and innovation among stakeholders within the value chain related to land mapping and citizen science. As such, the LandSense Innovation Challenge targets individuals, web-entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs coming from all participating Horizon 2020 countries, to present innovative IT solutions addressing one of the three LandSense domains: Urban Landscape Dynamics, Agricultural Land Use, and Forest & Habitat Monitoring. The challenge focuses on exploiting data streams coming from the LandSense Citizen Observatory, which consist of a diverse set of data including land cover change detection, threats to natural habitats, greenspace monitoring, etc., to design novel LULC solutions targeted at the citizen science community. In addition, participants will be encouraged to access data from the Sentinel Hub Service or other relevant EO data sources as well as the LandSense Quality Assurance Service in their solution. The process for the LandSense Innovation Challenge will be divided into two stages. First, there will be public call for ideas (Feb/March 2020) to which teams can submit proposals. After a review of the applications, a select number of shortlisted teams (5 to 10) will be invited to join the finals in Trieste to pitch their ideas to a jury of experts. Teams attending the finals will have the opportunity to discover more about LandSense, get coaching/mentoring to improve their pitches and network with the vibrant EO and citizen science communities. The winning team will not only receive a grand prize but also continue collaboration with the LandSense consortium to further advance their solution

The Personalized Acne Treatment Tool - Recommendations to facilitate a patient-centered approach to acne management from the Personalizing Acne: Consensus of Experts

BACKGROUND: Acne, a commonly treated skin disease, requires patient-centered management due to its varying presentations, chronicity, and impact on health-related quality of life. Despite this, evidence-based clinical guidelines focus primarily on clinical severity of facial acne, omitting important patient- and disease-related factors, including ongoing management. OBJECTIVES: To generate recommendations to support patient-centered acne management, which incorporate priority and prognostic factors beyond conventional clinical severity, traditionally defined by grading the appearance and extent of visible lesions. METHODS: The Personalizing Acne: Consensus of Experts consisted of 17 dermatologists who used a modified Delphi approach to reach consensus on statements regarding patient- and treatment-related factors pertaining to patient-centered acne management. Consensus was defined as ≥75% voting agree or strongly agree. RESULTS: Recommendations based on factors such as acne sequelae, location of acne, high burden of disease, and individual patient features were generated and incorporated into the Personalized Acne Treatment Tool. LIMITATIONS: Recommendations are based on expert opinion, which may differ from patients\u27 perspectives. Regional variations in healthcare systems may not be represented. CONCLUSIONS: The Personalizing Acne: Consensus of Experts panel provided practical recommendations to facilitate individualized management of acne, based on patient features, which can be implemented to improve treatment outcomes, adherence, and patient satisfaction

Citizen Science Projects (MOOC) 2.13:Technology and data collection: the case of Makerspaces

This record is part of a wider collection that captures the online course, Citizen Science Projects: How to make a difference (MOOC). This record represents a single learning activity in the MOOC in chronological order. Associated content is linked to the master record below