Citizen Science

using community knowledge in health, mapping and beyond

Bastian Greshake Tzovaras

📫 bgreshake@proton.me
🐘 @gedankenstuecke@scholar.social


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2024-12-11
About me

About me

  • started off in biology
  • then moved towards bioinformatics & citizen science
  • now interested in how to facilitate community-driven knowledge production (citizen science, free/open source, …)
About me

About me

Have worn a lot of hats, in different places

About me

What is citizen science?

Engaging people not professionally engaged in science in producing scientific knowledge

  • Type of contributions/tasks can vary
  • "Depth" of engagement can vary
  • Governance of projects can vary
About me

What is citizen science?

It depends!

Image: CC BY-SA, Katharina Kloppenborg
About me

Thinking about diversity in CS

Image: CC BY-SA, Katharina Kloppenborg
a citizen science example

a citizen science example

#1: Quantified Flu

It is 2020, and people want to understand if they are having an infection

a citizen science example

Quantified Flu

Lots of academic studies on using wearable data for understanding infections.
But few actually talk to patients.

Turns out, people have lots of expertise/questions:

  • Which symptoms would be relevant?
  • How to request people to enter symptoms?
  • What are "normal" physiological values?
a citizen science example

Quantified Flu

Working together to design a CS solution

Greshake Tzovaras et al. Using an Individual-Centered Approach to Gain Insights From Wearable Data in the Quantified Flu Platform: Netnography study (2021)
a citizen science example

Quantified Flu

The resulting project

Greshake Tzovaras et al. Using an Individual-Centered Approach to Gain Insights From Wearable Data in the Quantified Flu Platform: Netnography study (2021)
a citizen science example

Quantified Flu

What we learned thanks to working with a community:

  • Comparing to baseline is important
  • How to avoid "missing data"
  • Situated knowledge is very important (cf. smoking example)
Mapping as community-driven CS

So, how does all of this relate to maps?

Mapping as community-driven CS

A collaborative, peer-produced geo database

Mapping as community-driven CS

Examples of things people want to know:

  • Where can I recycle batteries/light bulbs/clothes?
  • Where is the closest mailbox to drop a letter?
  • Where can I find a water fountain?
  • Which places are accessible by wheelchair?
Mapping as community-driven CS

Examples of things people want to know:

  • Where can I recycle batteries/light bulbs/clothes?
  • Where is the closest mailbox to drop a letter?
  • Where can I find a water fountain?
  • Which places are accessible by wheelchair?
Mapping as community-driven CS

  • research object: a geo-database
  • range of tasks:
    • arm-chair mapping,
    • GPS tracks,
    • surveying,
    • micro mapping
Mapping as community-driven CS

How does it compare to Google Maps et al.?

  • Completely editable by local communities (vs. "suggest edit" in Google)
  • Enables social annotations/POI w/o commercial interests
  • Open licenses mean free re-use & re-mix (commercial, non-commercial, municipal, …)
Reference images for mapping

What does it take to maintain a range of tasks?

HD reference material!

  • Ideally, top-down, ortorectified imagery & street-level imagery, openly licensed and maintained.
  • Enables participation for more people, including those who can not or do not want to engage in field mapping.
Reference images for mapping

aerial images

top: Bing images (for use w/ OSM)

bottom: drone-based images on OpenAerialMap

Drone image, Federico Gazaba CC BY-SA 4.0
Reference images for mapping

w=200px

Reference images for mapping

Street-level images

  • Great to supplement aerial images
  • Identify wide range of POI on the ground
  • Can help with asynchronous surveying
  • Commercial providers prioritize based on fin. interest
Reference images for mapping

Street-level images

  • "alternatives" with openly licensed images run by "big tech"
    • Mapillary is a subsidiary of Meta
    • Kartaview one of Grab
  • commercially owned infrastructure means no say in governance
  • "global" scope means platforms can not adapt to local needs
About Panoramax

Panoramax

  • Developed at the 🇫🇷 National Geographic Institute
  • Infrastructure is…
    • openly licensed,
    • federated
  • 3 instances so far: IGN (🇫🇷 only), OSM FR (🌎), MapComplete (🌎)
  • Federation allows for meta-catalog, and adaptation to local needs (e.g. what needs to be blurred)
About Panoramax

Images can be recorded in many ways

About Panoramax

Uploading images

Depending on the volume of images it can be…

  • as easy as the web uploader
  • or using the command-line tool.
About Panoramax

Using the images


The iD editor for OSM can already display the routes - and images - to allow for easily adding POI

Thanks! 💖

Thanks for your attention!

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Other OSM-related links:

p.s. the code for the slides is on Codeberg.

About citizen science