The COBWEB Project is a 4-year research project that aims to explore how crowdsourced environmental data from citizen science projects can be made interoperable and reusable across projects and data infrastructures. It will develop mobile applications to collect and analyze crowdsourced data on the environment from biosphere reserves in the UK, Germany, and Greece to support decision making. The project is currently in its 16th month of the 48 month duration and working to implement its data platform and develop its first demonstrator in Wales by the next milestone.

1. COBWEB Project
Citizens’ Science and Smart Cities Summit,
JRC, Ispra, Italy.
5th Feb, 2014
Chris Higgins
Project Coordinator
chris.higgins@ed.ac.uk
http://cobwebproject.eu/

2. The brief…
• Explore the interoperability and reusability of
data across citizen-centred projects (technical,
organizational, legal perspectives),
• The relationships between Smart Cities and
Citizen-centred projects,
• The interoperability with official data
infrastructures, such as the Infrastructure for
Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) of
which JRC is the technical coordinator.

3. Citizen Observatory Web
• 4 year research project
• Crowdsourced environmental data to aid
decision making
• Introduce quality measures and reduce
uncertainty
• Combine crowdsourced data with existing
sources of data

4. Project Partners

5. Essential context – WNBR
• UNESCO Man and Biosphere Programmes
World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR)
– Sites of excellence to foster harmonious integration
of people and nature for sustainable development
through participation, knowledge sharing, poverty
reduction and human well-being improvements,
cultural values and society's ability to cope with
change, thus contributing to the Millennium
Development Goals
• 610 reserves in 117 countries
• Seville criteria means modern reserves have to
encompass significant human populations in
order to get designated

6. COBWEB Biosphere Reserves
UK (Wales): Biosffer Dyfi
– Development work
concentrated here
• Germany: Wadden See and Hallig Islands
• Greece: Mount Olympus & Gorge of Samaria
• Left open possibility of expansion to further BRs
later in project

7. What are we going to build?
A number of demonstrator mobile phone
applications
– Exactly what, deliberately left open and
subject to discussion with stakeholders
3 pilot case study areas:
1. Validating earth
observation products
2. Biological monitoring
3. Flooding

8. Making data available through GEOSS
• Data will be available via OGC Web
Services, eg, WFS, WMS, SOS
• Discoverable via CSW
• Will continue working within the context
of the Architecture Implementation Pilots

9. GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilots (AIP)
• One of the means by which GEOSS
addresses interoperability issues and
GEOSS Common Infrastructure extension
work
• Led by the OGC
• All contributions are in-kind
• Phased approach
• AIP-7 being planned now

10. Technology that could be reused
• “Data collected should be made available
through the GEOSS without any
restrictions”
• But, we must address “questions of
privacy…”
• In AIP-6 we piloted the use of access
management federations

11. WP5: Privacy assurance, access management
• COBWEB about environmental, not
personal data
• Some kinds of protected data that may be
encountered during the project:
– Personal information, eg, name, email address
– Location protected species
– Reference data from European National Mapping
and Cadastral Agencies, eg, INSPIRE Network
Services
– Conflated data

15. Dimensions of Interoperability
From the European Interoperability Framework for Pan-European eGovernment Services
(http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Docb0db.pdf?id=31597)

16. Where we are in the project…
• Month 16 of 48 – still some flexibility
• November 2013: Milestone 2:
– End of design and initial stakeholder
engagement phase. Start implementing
platform
• November 2014: Milestone 3:
– First Welsh demonstrator completed and
ready for testing in the field
chris.higgins@ed.ac.uk