The Citizen Observatory: Enabling Next Generation Citizen Science

O’Grady Michael (), O’Hare Gregory (), Ties Stephanie () and Williams Jamie ()
Additional contact information
O’Grady Michael: University College Dublin, Ireland
O’Hare Gregory: University College Dublin, Ireland
Ties Stephanie: Environment Systems Ltd, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom
Williams Jamie: Environment Systems Ltd, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom

Business Systems Research, 2021, vol. 12, issue 2, 221-235

Abstract: Background: Citizen science offers an attractive paradigm for addressing some of the complex problems facing society. However, translating the paradigm’s potential into meaningful action and sustainable impact remains a formidable challenge. Historically, the citizen science landscape was fractured into silos of activities; nonetheless, it has demonstrably delivered credible results. An innovative concept of the Citizen Observatory offers a tractable means of mitigating many of the recurring issues that historically afflicted citizen science initiatives, thus empowering a new generation of citizen scientists. Citizen Observatories may be regarded as open, standardised software platforms for community-based monitoring of any phenomenon of interest. Objectives: This paper seeks to validate a Citizen Observatory in a traditional citizen science context, that of butterfly recording. Methods/Approach: A case study was undertaken in a UNESCO-designated Biosphere Reserve. Results: A community of citizen scientists successfully recorded various observations concerning butterflies, their feeding behaviours, and their habitat. The resultant dataset was made available to the local government environmental agency. Conclusions: The Citizen Observatory model offers a realistic basis for enabling more sustainable participatory science activities. Such developments have implications for non-government organisations, businesses, and local governments.

Keywords: citizen science; Citizen Observatory; open science; participatory science (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O35 Q01 Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/bsrj-2021-0029 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bit:bsrysr:v:12:y:2021:i:2:p:221-235:n:3

DOI: 10.2478/bsrj-2021-0029

Access Statistics for this article

Business Systems Research is currently edited by Mirjana Pejić Bach

More articles in Business Systems Research from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().