Workshop Report WG3: CS and Environmental Monitoring - Benefits and Challenges

Workshop Report WG3: CS and Environmental Monitoring - Benefits and Challenges

 

Date:  Start: 21 November 2018, 12:00 – 17:00 I Finish: 22 November 2018, 09:00 – 17:45
Location: Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy

Participants (signed via e-COST 11):
Dr Steffen Fritz AT, Dr Quentin Groom BE, Dr Juhani Kettunen FI, Ms Maryam Lotfian CH, Dr Esra
Per TR, Mr Dirk Schmeller DE, Ms Kalterina Shulla AL, Dr Monika Suškevics EE, Mr Hamdi Tekin
TR, Mr Petr Vorisek CZ, Dr Katrin Vohland DE,

Organization Commitee:
Marina Manzoni (European Commission - DG Joint Research Centre - JRC),
Sven Schade European Commission - DG Joint Research Centre - JRC),
Katrin Vohland (Chair of Citizen Science Cost Action, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin)

Goals:

The ultimate goal of the workshop was to identify benefits, challenges and recommendations from a large number of different stakeholders (from the scientific, policy and citizens perspectives) - with a view to improve developments, promoting and accelerating the use of Citizens Science for (environment-related) policy making throughout Europe.

Achievements:

The outputs from these two days joint effort and collaborative work include (i) a collection of presentations about activities and best practices in the environmental domain; and (ii) precious expert feedback and recommendations on a number of priority issues - both, in terms potentialities and challenges encountered by CS approaches applied to policy making at EU and at Member State level. Furthermore, the event offered valuable feedback on the very first draft guidelines on CS for environmental monitoring, and the related draft roadmap.

Next steps:

The results and conclusion stemming from this workshop will feed into an EC Staff Working Document (SWD) on how CS can complement monitoring and reporting in the environmental domain.

The workshop highlighted a number of essential findings, cross-cutting and interrelated needs, fundamental elements and influencing factors, potentialities and challenges that will need to be subject of further research.

The results from the Workshop will be summarised in a technical report, including relevant recommendations extrapolated in support the development of CS in the environmental domain. The report will be made publicly available and also inform broader stakeholders communities. We hope that it will also stimulate the deployment and uptake of CS approaches in other policy domains.