What is the role of crowdsourcing in EO? When does it make sense? What are the mistakes to avoid? [presentation given at the EU workshop on research and innovation in support of the Earth Observation market

1. Crowdsourcing for Earth Observations:
Perils & Promises
Daniele Miorandi

2. Outline
• What is the role of crowdsourcing in EO?
• Where does it fit into EO frameworks?
• Why do people want to crowdsource?
• When does crowdsourcing make sense?
• And what are the benefits and impacts?
• How (NOT) to blow up your EO crowdsourcing
campaign

3. What is the role of
crowdsourcing in EO?

4. The expert

5. The machine (AI)

7. Where does
crowdsourcing fit in EO?

8. In situ observation
Data Collection

9. Remote observation
Data interpretation (annotation)

10. Why do people want
to crowdsource?

11. Success stories

13. • The largest citizen science platform
• 1+M contributors
• 25 live projects spanning astrophysics, zoology,
biology, medicine, climate science, and the humanities
• Many of them about image annotation

15. When does
crowdsourcing make
sense?

16. Emerging
countries
Avoid development of
complex, expensive
infrastructure
Rely on people

17. Citizen empowerment
Raise awareness of environmental issues
Involve in environmental governance
Towards collective care-taking

19. How (not) to blow up your
crowdsourcing campaign

20. Better:
4 ways to blow up your
crowdfunding campaign

21. #1: Focus on
technology

27. Take home #1: make sure
you understand people’s
problems and tackle them

28. #2: Build an app

29. –NESTA, Connected Councils: A digital vision of local
government in 2025
“Resist the temptation to build an app.”

30. The sad reality about apps
1. Convincing users to install an app is hard
2. Convincing users to sign up for an app is very
hard
3. Convincing users to keep on using an app is
impossible

31. Take home #2: Go where the
users are (social networks,
whatsapp, web etc.)

32. #3: Gamification for
user engagement

34. NO

35. Take home #3: there is no
shortcut for engaging
users

36. #4: Run purely Internet-
based crowdsourcing
campaigns

37. There is life out of the Internet!

38. Take home #4: tap into &
engage with local
communities

39. Examples of
crowdsourcing for EOs

40. CITI-SENSE
FP7 project on Citizens’ Observatories
Focus on air quality (indoor/outdoor) and safety of public
places
14 pilots
http://www.citi-sense.eu/
http://www.citizen-obs.eu/

41. SCENT
• H2020 project
• Focus on active citizen
involvement in land cover/land
use monitoring
• For enhancing flood risk maps
• Pilots in Attica (GR) and
Danube Delta (RO)

42. CIVICFLOW
• A tool for managing civic
engagement campaigns
• Used in CITI-SENSE
• At the heart of the SCENT
crowdsourcing platform
• FREE for non-commercial
usage
• www.civicflow.com

43. Daniele
Miorandi
Executive VP R&D
U-Hopper
daniele.miorandi@u-hopper.com