DLR Institute of Data Science: Making Citizen Science Data fit for Use

Abstract

On 29th of August 2017 the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Data Science was established in the city of Jena, Germany. This institute will focus on data related research such as big data management and analysis, digital production platforms, and software and IT security. One of the six workgroups of this institute is dedicated to citizen science related scientific questions. The workgroup will benefit from the close cooperation with local and regional research institutes such as the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and the Bauhaus University in Weimar. Although the tremendous potential of citizen science has been recognized and partly used within various thematic fields, some important issues lack thorough and systematic research. This includes i) sociologic and psychologic aspects with regard to the engagement and motivation of people, ii) the collection and provision of credible, meaningful and (re-)usable citizen science data, e.g. semantic attribution, data quality & reliability, and iii) strategies for the analysis of the data and the generation of insights from these, e.g. knowledge discovery, automation, visualization, or integration of heterogeneous data sources. The citizen science workgroup will undertake dedicated research on the mentioned topics. Thematically, the research will have close links to aerospace, including crisis management using social media data and volunteered geographic information as well as earth observation (remote sensing), e.g. local to global reference data generation for model training and product validation, but is open to other disciplines as well. The activities of the workgroup will benefit from a permanent citizen science lab acting as contact point for interested citizens, providing tools and infrastructure to support citizen projects, and hosting capacity building and education activities.