Thank you for all the Citizen Science in 2023!
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The year 2023 is slowly coming to an end, but before everyone goes into the well-deserved holidays, here is a quick update about the SPOTTERON platform, new upcoming features, and also a nice season holiday card handcrafted for you.
But to start off with the most important thing: thank you very much for bringing so many interesting projects and features to SPOTTERON this year! We are deeply grateful for your ongoing support and for allowing us to continuously extend the quality and possibilities of the platform.
| | | A hand-crafted Card for Citizen Science | | As it has become a long-running tradition, we have designed a special Holiday Card for 2023 to express our gratitude. We're hoping it makes you smile and spreads some holiday cheer. Here you can find it in high-quality resolution: | | | | Besides all the long-running projects and new Citizen Science Apps joining on SPOTTERON, highlights this year have also been the two new funded Horizon Europe projects about maritime ecosystem restoration, ocean research and protection of our seas. The first of the two, named "EFFECTIVE has already started. We are excited about the new features and innovations we will develop in the course of those projects! To celebrate this, our season card for 2023 is themed accordingly — we hope you like it! | | | | Special thanks also go to the Horizon 2020/Europe projects "IPM-Popillia", "YouCount", and "Minagris" for making the development of many of the new App features & innovations listed below possible! | | Platform news: The second half of 2023 has seen the design, development, and launch of new amazing features for Citizen Science and Public Engagement projects on SPOTTERON. Here is a quick overview of the new tools and technologies coming out of development: | | | | Available Feature: Audio Recording in Citizen Science Apps With the new Audio Recording Feature add-on on the SPOTTERON, projects can now directly work with sound data in their Citizen Science Apps. From bird songs to amphibian calls, from city noise to dialects, participants in SPOTTERON Apps can easily record live audio with a press of a button and also play back the sound recordings of other submissions via an easy-to-use interface. If you are interested in adding audio recordings to your Citizen Science App, please drop us an email!
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| | | Project Internationalization Toolkit Projects on SPOTTERON can now grow from their original scope into international collaborations. With the Project Internationalization Toolkit, a project's App can be co-used independently by additional sub-partners for data collection, science communication and community building.
Each added sub-partner in an international project can independently work with the app and gets direct per-country data access for management and export in the SPOTTERON Data Administration Interface. The sub-partners of a project can furthermore manage all comments and community activities from their user base, and even send direct push messages to all participants in their own country. This not only enables the collaborative use of one project for data recording by institutions or stakeholders for each involved country, but also allows communication with the local user community in native languages. In all projects using the Internationalization Toolkit, the role of the coordinator/project lead stays untouched, with full overview of all user contributions and project activities.
| | If you are planning to grow your project internationally through collaborations with other countries, please let us know via a quick email, and we are happy to introduce the new toolkit and how it works in an online call.
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| | | New Feature at roll-out: Multiple Images per Spot + Streaming Upload System for Background Data Transfer Photographs or other images are an important part in many Citizen Science projects. With the new Multiple Images per Spot, it is now possible to add a new tool package to your project App, enabling users to not only add one picture, but many to an image gallery.
More images also mean more data, and we would rather not make the participants in the Apps wait until an upload is finished. So, to ensure a good user experience in the Apps, we have overhauled the system responsible for uploading spots to the SPOTTERON IT infrastructure servers to allow background data streaming. With the new system, a user does not need to wait until their own contribution is uploaded. Furthermore, there is a brand-new interface showing the upload progress and making it possible to revisit fresh uploads quickly with just a touch. A new blog post introducing the feature package further will be online in the next year! |
| | | Citizen Science Innovation: AI for Species Identification Prototype 2023 is the year of artificial intelligence — for the better and sometimes as well for the worse. On SPOTTERON, we have taken our first steps to integrate responsible AI into the Citizen Science App platform and launched a first result in the Horizon 2020 IPM-Popillia project. In the project, participants help discover new and existing infestations of the invasive species Popillia japonica through Citizen Science. To support a correct species identification of the beetle, we have developed, trained and integrated an AI image recognition toolkit that allows users to send a photograph for AI identification. Our AI system can also be further trained for more target species in projects for improved result quality in the AI species recognition. | | | | Future revisions of the SPOTTERON AI will integrate the new image gallery feature, too, for improved image recognition quality. The upcoming versions in 2024 will furthermore allow users to select points of interest if, e.g., there is a flower and various insects present in the same photograph. More news and a feature blog post about the SPOTTERON AI for species identification are coming in early 2024. Stay tuned! |
| | | Available Feature: Automated Reporting System The outcomes from the IPM-Popillia project in 2023 do not stop with the new AI. Another major task was the development of a system, that allows a Citizen Science/Public Engagement project to make automated reports about new user submissions. The invasive beetle Popillia japonica is classified as a controlled pest species in the European Union. This implies that when someone finds such a controlled pest species, a mandatory report has to be made to an official national plant health organisation. For the upcoming public launch of the Citizen Science App for Popillia japonica and other invasive species, we have developed a multilevel system that, based on the observation's GEO coordinates, enables automated reports on a per-country and per-species basis.
Whenever a user submits a new data point for a controlled pest species, a project team member or species expert receives an email report about the new entry with a clickable link to the spot in the App. The expert then can confirm the classification with just a click or touch if the species identification by the user is correct. When a data point gets confirmed, the system sends a second report to the right national authority, informing them about the sighting and providing a direct link to the spot in the App. With this system in place, a Citizen Science App can now also become an official tool for location-based reporting to experts and authorities on a national and international basis. Moreover, we have integrated a range of data connectors and tools from the SPOTTERON Project Internationalization Toolkit into the project to allow extended collaborations and data exchange with institutions, other projects, and stakeholders. With the new extensions integrated, the data flow for invasive species is complete and goes from observation to expert confirmation and official reporting to streamlined data sharing with involved projects and stakeholders. | | | | In 2024, we plan to relaunch IPM-Popillia Citizen Science App as a collaborative platform for invasive species and controlled pests, with the first external projects now already joining up. The extended App will not only serve as an example of how to co-use a Citizen Science initiative together with topic-related projects, but also as a lighthouse for technology innovation, funding sustainability and project collaboration. Quite a ride!
The development of the Automated Reporting System and the SPOTTERON AI Image Recognition feature has been funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 861852. |
| | | Next upcoming Feature: Push Messages Overhaul and Popup Functionality
Many projects love the Push Messages, this integrated communication feature allows sending custom short messages to all participants with a click, including link a to a website and emojis. In 2023, we will have extended the push message feature in project collaboration, making it possible to send messages to only selected countries, to available user roles, or even add timers or planned messages. And based on the previous work, more coming.
The new generation of the feature introduces push message images, a highlighted external link, and the option to create pop-ups that will open up at the start of your Citizen Science App. This adds another layer of dissemination and can be used in a multitude of ways. The new feature will be ready to use in early 2024 after the next app update cycle! |
| | | | Now off for the holidays! 🎄🥂 From the 22th of December, we will take some time off to visit loved ones and recharge over the holidays. We will be back in office regularly on the 11th of January, ready to tackle the new year with renewed energy and enthusiasm — See you on the other side!
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