COST Action Alien CSI MC and WG Meeting in Aveiro, Portugal 

Where: Aveirp, Portugal 

When: May 2022

Organized by Heliana Teixeira, Siobhan Edney, Quentin Groom and Helen Roy. The workshop had more than 50 participants from the network in plenary sessions.

Working group meetings were organised by WG1 leaders Elizabete Marchante, Peter Brown, and Anna Gazda and WG2 leaders Tim Adriaens, and Elena Tricarico. 


PDF icon MC Meeting Aveiro

PDF icon Veronica_Aveiro_ARU


British Science Festival

Where:  Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, UK

When: 11 September 2021

Event Organisers: Peter Brown, Helen Roy and Rachel Farrow

The Alien CSI COST Action will be part of the family day at the British Science Festival. There will be a stand and activity with the aim of raising the awareness of alien species and encouraging people to record them. Details of the festival are at https://britishsciencefestival.org/ 

 


Virtual Workshop - Horizon scanning novel technologies for IAS citizen science - 2021

Workshop organisers: Elena Tricarico and Tim Adriaens

Jointly organized by: Working Group 1: Engaging people in Citizen Science (Peter Brown, Elizabete Marchante) and Working Group 2: Approaches to citizen science, embracing innovative advances in tools and technology (Elena Tricarico, Tim Adriaens)

Dates: 11/05, 25/05, 15/06 and 26/10 (remote meeting)

Number of participants: 40

Context: The contribution of volunteers in recording invasive alien species (IAS) has been fostered by technological developments such as social media, apps, low-cost sensors, search engines and predictive analytics. These technology developments, an increased attention to citizen science (CS) and a cultural change towards collaboration and openness in research within the policy agenda will increase the contribution of volunteer recording. The use of these novel tools and technologies surely represents motivation in itself to many recorders. The workshop will explore the value of emerging technologies for CS in the context of AS, recognizing the contribution of volunteers. Current and novel tools that hold potential to increase the amount and quality of citizen science data on IAS include data mining (scraping, API programming, database administration), data and image analysis (GIS, clustering methods, spatio-temporal analysis, sentiment analysis), data visualization techniques and diy technology (sensors). Collectively, these technologies have the potential to engage broad audiences, motivate volunteers, improve data collection, control data quality, corroborate model results and ultimately lead to better conservation decisions.

Technologies discussed: At the MC and working group meeting in Cyprus (25 - 28th February 2019) a number of technologies were identified that could be useful to IAS  citizen science, these were revised during the MC and working group meeting in Slovenia (23 - 25 September): Gamification, Social media scraping, Active and passive  crowdsourcing, Machine learning / AI, Image analysis satellites, Google Street view, Augmented reality / Virtual Reality, Neural marketing, Environmental DNA and barcoding, Drones etc, Sensors, Wildlife cameras, Sound analysis, Adaptive sampling, Technologies to increase data quality and reduce uncertainty, Sniffer dogs, Data aggregation software and visualisation and analysis tools, GPS tracking devices, EPI apps, iEcology, Culturomics.

Aims of the workshop: Showcase actual use of some of these techniques for IAS CS through examples within the AlienCSI network

  • To horizon scan novel techniques and showcase examples of their application in related fields
  • To systematically review the potential of these techniques for IAS recording and IAS decision making using an established framework for evaluation
  • The concrete output would be a peer-reviewed paper on the issue.

Talk 1

Introduction to novel technologies for citizen science (Sven Schade, European ommission - JRC)

Talk 2

Invasive plant species monitoring through an AI-based citizen science platform (Alexis Joly & Pierre Bonnet, Pl@ntNET)

Talk 3

Scraping social media for IAS observations, (Stefan Daume, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Norway)

Talk 4

Acoustic detection by citizen scientists - FrogID (Jodi Rowley - Curator, Amphibian & Reptile Conservation Biology, Australian Museum Research Institute & Centre for Ecosystem Science, Sydney)

Talk 5

DNA detectives: engaging citizen scientists in DNA based methods for biodiversity monitoring (Lori Lawson Handley, University of Hull)

Talk 6

Use of drones for mapping pine processionary moth through citizen science (Arnau Campanera, CTFC Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia)

Talk 7

Innovations in visualisations for CS and harvesting images from social media as a source of biodiversity records (Tom August, UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, UK)

Talk 8

Going beyond occurrence and detection: monitoring species interactions (Quentin Groom, Meise Botanic Garden, Belgium)

Talk 9

Wildlife cameras, camera platforms and their application in CS (Jim Casaer, INBO, Belgium)