CS Inventory Vocabulary
An inventory of citizen science activities for environmental policies
Citizen science is the non-professional involvement of volunteers in the scientific process, whether in the data collection phase or in other phases of the research. It can be a powerful tool for environmental management that has the potential to inform an increasingly complex environmental policy landscape and to meet the growing demands from society for more participatory decision-making. While there is growing interest from international bodies and national governments in citizen science, the evidence that it can successfully contribute to environmental policy development, implementation, evaluation or compliance remains scant. Central to elucidating this question is a better understanding of the benefits delivered by citizen science, that is to determine to what extent these benefits can contribute to environmental policy, and to establish whether projects that provide policy support also co-benefit science and encourage meaningful citizen engagement.
In order to get an evidence base of citizen science activities that can support environmental policies in the European Union (EU), the European Commission (DG ENV, with the support of DG JRC) contracted Bio Innovation Service (FR), in association with Fundacion Ibercivis (ES) and The Natural History Museum (UK), to perform a "Study on an inventory of citizen science activities for environmental policies" (see the "Publications" section below). The first objective was to develop an inventory of citizen science projects relevant for environmental policy and assess how these projects contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly. To this end, a desk-research and an EU-wide survey were used to identify 512 citizen science projects of relevance to environmental policy. The second objective was to assess the conditions under which citizen science can best support environmental policy, through the selection and analysis of a sample of citizen science projects. This was followed by an in-depth analysis of 45 projects along 94 project attributes. Subsequently, this analysis provided the foundation for making a series of recommendations to leverage the contribution of citizen science to environmental policy.
These pages provide an overview of the attributes that were used to compile the above mentioned inventory, together with their definitions.
| Property | Label | Expected Type | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| active | Still active | DefinedTerm | Indication (yes/no) if the project is still active.
Allowed values: Yes, No |
| category | Primary category of project | DefinedTerm | Adapted from on Haklay et al. (2013) Citizen Science and Policy: A European Perspective.
See the attributes of the "selected practices in citizen science for environmental policy" for other potential categories of projects impacted. Allowed values: Passive sensing, Crowd-sourcing, Volunteer computing, Monitoring, Occasional reporting, DIY engineering, Civic science, Facilitating platform |
| contact | Contact | Text | Contact for the project, ideally an e-mail address (alias or personal). |
| description | Brief description | Text | Short description of the project (1 or 2 sentences). |
| end_date | End year | Number | The year when the project ended, or will end. |
| environmental_classification | Environmental Classification | EnvironmentalClassification | The environmental classification of the project, including the primary environmental domain and field addressed by the project activities. |
| geographic_coverage | Geographic coverage | DefinedTerm | The countries involved in the project team/consortium (comma separated list; lead country first). Naming for countries follows https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search (English short name + "Europe" + "World"). |
| geographic_extent | Geographical extent | DefinedTerm | The spatial scale at which the project is implemented. Sub-national is used as generic category for projects for which the sub-national scale is not known (i.e. regional, or city, or neighborhood). All regional, city and neighborhood projects are also sub-national projects.
Allowed values: Global, Macro-regional, National, Sub-national, Regional, City, Neighborhood |
| id | UID | Number | Unique identifier of an entry. |
| lead_organisation | Lead Organisation | LeadOrganisation | Information about the lead partner, including name and organisation type. |
| name | Name | Text | Name of the project. |
| policy_relevance | Policy relevance | DefinedTerm | Main phase of the policy cycle potentially impacted by the project actions. See the attributes of the "selected practices in citizen science for environmental policy" for other potential policy areas affected.
Allowed values: Problem definition, Early-warning, Policy implementation or monitoring, Policy evaluation, Compliance assurance, NA: no clear policy link |
| policy_aims | Policy aims | PolicyAims | The policy aims of the project, information on their existence (yes/no) and an explanation of this value. |
| sdg | SDG | SDG | Indication of the possible impact of the project on each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, as defined by the United Nations (UN). |
| social_uptake | Social uptake | DefinedTerm | Indication of number of participants or followers of the project. Assessed based on expert knowledge/reporting project contact point:
- Very large: large number of users, tradition, excellent EC-funded projects with high numbers of users (above 1,000). So: zooniverse, opal, ebird, ornitho and other big names, because of number of users. Old UK societies (from XVII century to late XX century), because of tradition; EC-funded projects that we would say excellent in review and with high number of users (above 1000) - Large: EC-funded projects that we would say good in review and with medium number of users (below 1000) - Considerable: all others Allowed values: Very large, Large, Considerable |
| source | Source | DefinedTerm | Source of the project description record, i.e. how this description became available. The list of possible answer options (currently including "Original EC Study", "EUSurvey" and "Irish EPA") can be extended if new sources become available.
Allowed values: Original EC Study, EUSurvey, Irish EPA |
| start_date | Start year | Number | The year when the project started. |
| url | Website | URL | Link to the project's website. |