Extreme Citizen Science
Extreme Citizen Science brings together scholars from diverse fields to develop and contribute to the guiding theories and methodologies that will enable any community to start a Citizen Science project that will help them deal with issues that concern them. With an interdisciplinary research approach, it also aims to provide a set of tools that can be used by any user, regardless of their background and level of literacy, to collect, assay and act on information by using adaptable scientific methods…more.
Global Challenges
‘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 coolaboration at an unprecedented scale, and where population is continuing to increase, sustainable?
Our aims
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 formerly excluded environments in which it can be used… more.
Extreme Citizen Science blog 
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