About this group

Back in 2014, Citizen Science had no visibility in the GEO work plan (now renamed as work program). As a request from the EC, the FP7 Citizens Observatories projects (CITI-SENSE, WeSenseIt, COBWEB, CITCLOPS, OMNISCIENTIS) were included in the Task IN-04 GEOSS Communication Networks.

In 2016, at the St. Petersburg GEO Plenary, Jose Miguel Rubio (at that time working with the European Commission, proposed the creation of a community activity stating that "Citizen-generated data can fill in important gaps in in-situ Earth observations, strengthen environmental capacities and trigger innovation". The role of EO, inc. Citizens’ Observatories, to address global societal challenges (e.g. SDGs) was also emphasized . The initial composition of the group was: Steffen Fritz (IIASA), Linda See (IIASA), Ian McCallum (IIASA) Inian Moorthy (IIASA) Joan Maso (CREAF) Athanasia Tsertou (ICCS), Luigi Ceccaroni (1000001labs), Jose Miguel Rubio Iglesias (European Commission) Suvodeep Mazumdar (University of Sheffield), Drew Hemment (University of Dundee), Uta Wehn (IHE Delft), and Alena Bartonova (NILU). In 2017, Jose Miguel Rubio left the European Commission and Ground Truth 2.0 Team took a leading role in continuing the initiative. Initially, the Citizen Science Community Activity (CA) was mainly European, but this was about to change.

During 2018, more regular interactions were set up. In the period 2019-2020, the GEO Citizen Science CA was co-lead by Uta Wehn (Ground Truth, IHE Delft) and Lea Shanley (University of Wisconsin-Madison, US).

In 2021 John Pring (Geoscience Australia) and Joan Masó (CREAF) are the new co-chair of the group.

-- JoanMaso - 07 Mar 2021