Projects

Climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution are the defining environmental challenges of our time. While governments have set ambitious goals, the pace of implementation remains uneven. At the same time, citizen science has emerged as a credible and growing source of data and innovation.

The Working Group on Citizen Science and Climate Change Mitigation (CSCCM) has been established to develop, test, and scale citizen science approaches that support emission reductions and strengthen global climate action. (More info)

CSGP is currently hosting the Citizen Science part of the portal “World Environment Situation Room (WESR)”. WESR is the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) data, information and knowledge platform. It enables users to access, visualize, share and download data, information and knowledge services regarding the world environment situation in near real-time. More Info

If you would like to join the CS&AQ CoP, please register here.

The Global Mosquito Alert Consortium (GMAC), is the first global platform dedicated to advancing citizen science to tackle mosquito monitoring. GMAC will be an open, common set of protocols and toolkits that is augmented with modular components created to meet both global and local research and management needs. Each protocol associated with the Global Mosquito Alert Consortium will be structured around a common list of “core” fields. These fields may be augmented by additional information collected by local projects. A toolkit will list the protocols, supporting technologies, and resources such as guidance on volunteer management, information on working with decision-makers including public health agencies and pest managers, and lesson plans for bringing citizen science into educational environments. Data associated with the Global Mosquito Alert Consortium will be made available through the dynamic UN Environment platform Environment Live.

While consortium partners are predominantly based in the United States and Europe, a number of partners are pilot testing local deployments in Central America, South America, and Africa. More support is required to understand how technology can be customized to local needs and to build a truly global network. The GCSP is seeking to use its Network of Networks approach to connect likeminded organization to the GMAC community as well as potentially inspire citizen scientists to take a leadership role in new and globally diverse mosquito monitoring projects. The Global Mosquito Alert Consortium continues to hold virtual monthly meetings. So far, the following partners have joined the consortium:

• The Wilson Center’s Science and Technology Innovation Program (STIP, co-host)
• The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP, co-host)
• The European Citizen Science Association (ECSA, co-host)
• The Globe Observer Mosquito Health Mapper
• The Invasive Mosquito Project
• Muggenradar
• Mosquito Alert
• ZanzaMapp.
• MosquitoWEB
• CitizenScience.Asia

Photo by Johan Meuris

This Community of Practice is dedicated to stimulating exchange and cooperation between practitioners from the fields of Citizen Science (CS) and Open Science (OS). The aim is to, in general, increase, enrich and consolidate understanding across these two movements, and, as particular occasions of cooperation arise, accompany and feed into the UNESCO global policy process on Open Science.

If you would like to join the CS&OS CoP, please sign up here.

CSGP is involved in UNICEF Yoma project via IIASA and UNIGE, as partners see the project as a great vehicle for supporting Cit Sci Africa Association in its initial start-up phase. Yoma is a digital platform where young people can develop their skills, find opportunities, and achieve social and environmental impact. Young people can build their futures by actively engaging in social impact tasks as well as learning to earning opportunities.

The central hypotheses of the Yoma Operational Research project, coordinated by UNICEF. are:

1. With the help of AI, youth can collaborate effectively to design community-based initiatives that result in actions which contribute at a local level to achieving social and environmental progress.
2. Using appropriate crowdsourcing apps, these actions can produce citizen-generated data that is valuable for key stakeholders at government agencies, NGOs and the private sector.
3. Youth will engage at scale to carry out these actions, motivated by a carefully designed digital token-based system that is backed up by independent validation of the data they generate.
4. Such coordinated youth-based action will lead to improvements in relational well-being measured using a smart phone app that tracks indicators of well-being.
5. Key stakeholders will sustain such youth-based action beyond the operational research phase, motivated by both its positive social impact and the value of the data it generates.

The Yoma Operational Research project is a prototype for the kind of activities that the CSGP aims to carry out. It is lead by CSGP co-founding institution, University of Geneva, and involves Citizen Science Africa Association, as well as supporting several youth teams in their CS innovation journeys. Chief amongst these is the Nigerian DonateWater project, gathering data about water resources in that country. Other Yoma OR partners include RLabs in South Africa, CSIC in Spain, IIASA, ABC and Caliberco in Austria, Learning Planet Institute in France.