Breaking the wall between professional science and citizen science by hyperautomation

Introduction

Citizen science has become an integral part of biodiversity research with enormous potential for both improving biodiversity monitoring and involving citizens in scientific projects. However, the full integration of data generated with citizen science in professional research programs has not been fully reached.

Challenges in Integration

This is largely due to methodological challenges that compromise the value of the data that most citizen science projects have generated to date.

Innovative Solution

HyperCitizen will create an innovative solution that enables citizen science projects to generate data that are essentially equally informative as data generated by professional scientists. At the same time, HyperCitizen will provide additional value for the citizen scientists themselves, engaging them more profoundly in scientific research than has been previously possible.

Background

HyperCitizen derives from recent results generated by the ERC-Synergy project LIFEPLAN: A Planetary Inventory of Life - A New Synthesis Built on Big Data Combined with Novel Statistical Methods.

Development of Mobile Application

HyperCitizen will develop a mobile phone application for citizen science-based bird monitoring, enabling real-time interaction with users through hyperautomation.

Computational Methods

It will further develop computationally highly scalable methods for:

1. Convolutional neural network-based bird vocalization classification
2. Joint species distribution modeling used to produce prediction maps on past, present, and future distributions of birds and their vocalizations.

Proof of Concept

The proof of concept will be delivered by teaming up with bird enthusiast organizations and the Finnish national broadcasting company to launch and run a citizen science campaign on Finnish bird monitoring, culminating in the Great Migratory Bird Evening in spring 2024.

Engagement in Research

HyperCitizen aims to demonstrate how the public can be engaged in research in a way that breaks the current wall between citizen science and professional science.