Sustaining Citizen Science beyond an Emergency

Cobi Calyx
Additional contact information
Cobi Calyx: Centre for Social Impact, UNSW Sydney, Sydney 2052, Australia

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 11, 1-11

Abstract: This commentary explores lessons learned about aspects of citizen science sustainability, such as open data reuse after a project ends or after the urgency of a disaster. It is framed to be consistent with emerging research about how the 2020 pandemic relates to the sustainable development goals (SDGs). It argues for the importance of open data in citizen science, both in platform design and in citizen science outputs, to support sustainability beyond a funding cycle or emergency. This commentary discusses open datasets developed during the Ebola outbreak response in 2014 and the role of collaborative repositories in enabling uses beyond a single project. How citizen scientists can creatively contribute in ways aligned with humanitarian disaster response aims is explored.

Keywords: citizen science; crowdsourcing; PPE; SDGs; emergency response; disaster response; pandemic; open data; open source; sustainability; collaborative learning; disaster response; Ebola; Pybossa; GitHub; public health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/11/4522/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/11/4522/ (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:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:11:p:4522-:d:366483

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

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