Advice and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for Citizen-Science Environmental Health Assessments

Timothy M. Barzyk, Hongtai Huang, Ronald Williams, Amanda Kaufman and Jonathan Essoka
Additional contact information
Timothy M. Barzyk: National Exposure Research Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, USA
Hongtai Huang: Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
Ronald Williams: National Exposure Research Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, USA
Amanda Kaufman: Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, USA
Jonathan Essoka: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region III, Philadelphia, PA 19103, USA

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 5, 1-20

Abstract: Citizen science provides quantitative results to support environmental health assessments (EHAs), but standardized approaches do not currently exist to translate findings into actionable solutions. The emergence of low-cost portable sensor technologies and proliferation of publicly available datasets provides unparalleled access to supporting evidence; yet data collection, analysis, interpretation, visualization, and communication are subjective approaches that must be tailored to a decision-making audience capable of improving environmental health. A decade of collaborative efforts and two citizen science projects contributed to three lessons learned and a set of frequently asked questions (FAQs) that address the complexities of environmental health and interpersonal relations often encountered in citizen science EHAs. Each project followed a structured step-by-step process in order to compare and contrast methods and approaches. These lessons and FAQs provide advice to translate citizen science research into actionable solutions in the context of a diverse range of environmental health issues and local stakeholders.

Keywords: citizen science; environmental health assessment; decision analysis; local stakeholders; cumulative impacts; environmental justice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/5/960/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/5/960/ (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:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:5:p:960-:d:145748

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().