Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS)

 'Hot, Flat and Crowded', the title of Thomas Friedman's 2009 book, provides a useful shorthand for the over-arching challenges faced by humanity in the coming decades: how to make a globalised world, in which information and communication technologies are enabling knowledge exchange and collaboration at an unprecedented scale, and where population is continuing to increase, sustainable?

We aim to address the challenges of our globalised world through the creation of an interdisciplinary research group to focus on developing 'Extreme' Citizen Science tools and methodologies for use by communities, regardless of their level of literacy. The tools will be used to collect data, understand it, and share and use this knowledge to empower local groups and support action. This can be for monitoring environmental change or dealing with other issues.

Current Citizen Science practice assumes that educated citizens can participate in scientific data collection, but not in its analysis or in formulating research questions. However, the greatest impact of science can be gained when participants use scientific tools to improve their environment locally and share the knowledge globally. Thus, 'extreme' in this case refers both to the extent of the scientific engagement and to the formerly excluded environments in which it can be used.

To achieve a level of 'Extreme' Citizen Science, a narrow disciplinary knowledge is not enough. Therefore, an interdisciplinary research group has been created that is capable of engaging communities, that can overcome the technical and human-technology interaction challenges, understand the issues in the science of Citizen Science, and has the ability to deliver practical solutions. We are drawing on the knowledge of geographers, computer scientists, human-computer interaction experts, designers, electronic engineers, ecologists and other fields. We aim to  change the current state of the art by focusing on participatory sensing, monitoring and modelling activities, where decision on what is measured and the analysis are carried out at the community level, and lead to decisions and actions at that level. We will develop the underlying technologies to enable lay users to understand and manage their environment using established scientific methods and models.