Talk given as part of the Bluedot Festival. Tries to emphasise the current trends in Citizen Science, how are they powered by the same ICT innovation that powers other industries, and how curation and metadata are key both for professional and citizen scientist, and facilities to perform that will be needed.

1. Citizen Science in the era of
the Square Kilometre Array
Juande Santander-Vela
SKA Organisation

2. Golden era of astronomy

9. Possible through ICT innovation

10. Possible through ICT innovation

11. Possible through ICT innovation

12. Possible through ICT innovation

13. Possible through ICT innovation

14. Same ICT innovation for companies
and consumers

15. #1 ICT innovation: broadband

21. Digital data is easy to
access from everywhere

22. Digital data access is
blind to who you are

23. Digital data access is
(mostly) blind to who you are

24. Golden era of astronomy

25. Golden era of amateur astronomy

26. http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/

33. How is this possible?

34. How is this possible?
• Analog → Digital Data
• Common Data Formats
• Anonymous Access
• Lots of scientific Meta-Data

35. How is this possible?
• Analog → Digital Data
• Common Data Formats
• Anonymous Access
• Lots of scientific Meta-Data
Hidden
treasures!

36. Hanny’s
Voorwerp
https://www.galaxyzoo.org/

37. Hanny’s
Voorwerp
https://www.galaxyzoo.org/

40. Citizen Science is science done by
many citizens, looking at
real scientific data

41. Citizen Science ⟷ Crowdsourced
Data Science

42. Citizen Science ⟷ Crowdsourced Data Science
• Data (and metadata!) needs to be very well curated/mantained/
tagged so that both the existing data exposed to citizens, and the data
provided by them, can be meaningfully linked together.
→ Spatial: Telescope Centric (Az/Alt), Earth centric (RA/Dec, FK4, FK5,
ICRS), Solar centric (Ecliptic), Galactic centric (Galactic coordinates),
Super galactic…
→ Temporal: UTC, TAI, Julian date, HA… and cosmology times/
distances!
→ Observable: Polarisation, Flux…

43. Citizen Science ⟷ Cloud Science

44. Citizen Science ⟷ Cloud Science
• The only way to gather everyone is in the cloud
• Working on local copies is hard → remote tools allow for easier
integration of contributions
• Do you have the tool?
• Do you know there the data is?
• Do I have permission to change this?

45. But this is the challenge we’re facing!

46. ALMA

47. ALMA

48. ALMA SKA1

49. ALMA SKA1

52. What tools can we use to…
• Visualise those datasets? → Remote vs Local visualisation
and interaction
• Process those datasets for additional science → Remote vs Local
processing

53. What tools can we use to…
• Visualise those datasets? → Remote vs Local visualisation
and interaction
• Process those datasets for additional science → Remote vs Local
processing
☁
☁

54. What tools can we use to…
• Visualise those datasets? → Remote vs Local visualisation
and interaction
• Process those datasets for additional science → Remote vs Local
processing
☁ !
☁ !

55. Working on it!

56. Conclusions
• Citizen Science is enabled by ICT… and so is science for new large
research facilities
• Challenges for Citizen Science are challenges for normal science in
the SKA era
• Citizen Science makes some new science possible ⟷
Asynchronous Pro/Amateur collaboration
• Techniques are multi-disciplinary, not just for astronomy!

57. Conclusions
• Citizen Science is enabled by ICT… and so is science for new large
research facilities
• Challenges for Citizen Science are challenges for normal science in
the SKA era → we need to sort it out!
• Citizen Science makes some new science possible ⟷
Asynchronous Pro/Amateur collaboration
• Techniques are multi-disciplinary, not just for astronomy!

58. Conclusions
• Citizen Science is enabled by ICT… and so is science for new large
research facilities
• Challenges for Citizen Science are challenges for normal science in
the SKA era → we need to sort it out!
• Citizen Science makes some new science possible ⟷
Asynchronous Pro/Amateur collaboration → more people looking in
the haystack!
• Techniques are multi-disciplinary, not just for astronomy!

60. ¿Questions?

61. We have not spoken about…
• Digital literacy ⟷ Coding
• Open Data ⟷ Virtual Observatory :: Social Siences ⟷ Astronomy
• Metadata and Curation
• Citizen Science-like Infrastructures: e-Government,
Integrated Healthcare…