AN OVERVIEW OF THE STATE OF ONLINE CITIZEN SCIENCE AND CROWDSOURCING

Although involving volunteers in direct scientific work as “citizen scientists” is not new, the public’s increasing access to home-computing resources and high-speed Internet has significantly extended the potential scale and scope of many citizen science activities, bringing such projects online and allowing them to take advantage of the power of “the crowd.” Geoscience in particular, with the growing complexity and magnitude of its data collection and analysis needs, can benefit from finding ways to engage the public in real scientific efforts, simultaneously educating, inspiring, and “doing” science. Geoscientists from many fields are finding that, with careful planning and materials development, members of the public can accomplish a wide range of scientific tasks, from monitoring earthquakes to reporting on water quality to mapping distant planets.

This presentation will provide an overview of the state of online citizen science and crowdsourcing efforts, both from research and practitioner perspectives. In particular, this presentation will provide examples of successful, ongoing projects, and will summarize the identified benefits and challenges of working to involve the public in authentic, high-quality data collection and analysis efforts.