The challenge of Extreme Citizen Science (ECS) is to enable any community, regardless of literacy or education, to initiate, run, and use the result of a local citizen science activity, so they can be empowered to address and solve issues that concern them. In this context, citizen Science is understood as the participation of members of the public in a scientific project: shaping the research question, collecting the data, analysing it and using the knowledge that emerges from it. The project "Extreme Citizen Science: Analysis and Visualisation" (ECSAnVis) focused on the development of geographical analysis and visualisation tools that can be used, successfully, by people with limited literacy, in a culturally appropriate way. At the core of the project is imperative to see technology as part of socially embedded practices and culture, and avoid ‘technical fixes’.
The development of a novel, socially and culturally accessible Geographic Information System (GIS) interface and underlying algorithms, is aimed at providing communities with tools to support them to combine their local environmental knowledge with scientific analysis to improve environmental management. The project included the collaboration with local indigenous partners on case studies in critically important, yet fragile and menaced ecosystems in different locations. An interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, geographers, ecologists, and computer scientists has developed innovative hardware, software and participatory methodologies that will enable any community to use this novel solution.
The research is contributing novel methodologies and tools to the fields of geography, information science, anthropology, development, and conservation.
The overall objectives of the project were to:
1. Understand the social and technical requirements for the incorporation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in GIS and geographical technologies, and define the process to capture and import locally situated requirements.
2. Develop participatory methods and tools to create geographical visualisations suitable for non-literate users or those with very little technical expertise, in ways that provide useful information for the community, as well as opportunities to share information with trusted intermediaries.
3. Test the tools in situ, and understand the organisational, technological, and societal support that such tools require to be used effectively.
4. Develop the methodology to achieve socially-integrated technological development, incorporating ethical considerations and the Responsible Research and Innovation framework into a set of practical engagement methodologies as well as technical codes that are integrated into the software and hardware.
