Research and gather a list of climate change citizen science applications & data
The Goal Climate change affects current and future generations; adaptation and risk mitigation is necessary. In 2019 we set out to research how software can help deal with the impacts. With the advent of new technologies for environmental monitoring and tools for sharing information, citizens are more and more engaged in collecting environmental data, and many environmental agencies are using these data. A significant challenge, however, is that data users, such as federal, state, and local agencies, are sometimes skeptical about the quality of the data collected by citizen science organizations. We would like you to help us research, and gather data on international citizen science software applications & data sources (eg. open source projects, marketplaces, and applications). Research on how citizen science new technologies collect, analyze and report environmental data, this information will be saved on a template which we will provide.
Using software to help communities prepare/respond/recover from coastal erosion
The Goal With coastal erosion hazards predicted to increase globally, data to inform decision-making on erosion mitigation and adaptation strategies is becoming critical. However, gathering data over wide geographical areas is expensive and time-consuming and often requires highly trained professionals and scientists. We would like you to explore how software solutions can allow individuals who lack formal scientific training to meaningfully contribute to coastal erosion and ocean storm-related research projects as “citizen scientists”. In this project, you will research common risks and problems caused by the impact of coastal erosion and ocean storms, and how climate change will affect those. Then, examine how citizen scientists can help evaluate/ prepare for/mitigate/respond to these problems. What kind of websites or software can assist them in these efforts?
Website SEO Optimization
The Goal Climate change affects current and future generations; adaptation and risk mitigation is necessary. In 2019 we set out to research how software can help deal with the impacts. We have 3 (WordPress-created) websites that support our climate change project and we would like to promote better on search engines: 1. https://fight.climatechange.ca/ (our main climate change research) 2. http://www.deploy.solutions (our public website) 3. http://thanks.deploy.solutions (our thank you website) We are looking for students to help us with SEO optimization on the website content of any ONE of these sites (or one site per team, if you like) and improve our positioning. - Pick a site and review our content, themes, & site structure - Create and document the SEO Strategy - Conduct keyword research and analysis and use SEO guidelines to optimize content and keywords - Review our current WordPress website (content, backlinks, sitemaps, etc.) and suggest specific SEO updates for our websites/pages
Analyzing Deploy Solutions carbon footprint to get to Net Zero
The Goal Carbon Trust states that “A carbon footprint measures the total greenhouse gas emissions caused directly and indirectly by a person, organization, event or product.” Our carbon footprint relates to the impact our organization has on the environment. Our employees work remotely from their homes in different cities and use computers and online web services by Microsoft, Amazon, and other service providers. We would like you to help us analyze, identify and document steps to take in measuring and managing our business carbon footprint including that of our service providers so we can get to Net Zero.
Citizen Science Observation rules for Forest Fires
The Goal We are in the design and planning phase of a new climate change-related citizen science web prototype (related to "UN Sustainable Development Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts"). The prototype will be a mobile-friendly website that allows citizens to take and submit photos and other “ground truth” observations to the Trusted Authorities, during /after wildfires/bush fires. This information can be used to help the authorities assess and predict the wildfires/bush fires or disaster scope and impact. Climate change is a key factor in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires around the world. We are developing a citizen science prototype for people living in fire prone areas to help predict the likelihood of wildfire and minimize their devastating effects. We would like you to adapt our existing Citizen Science Observation rules for Floods, to wildfires/bush fires.
Install, configure, and script, a prototype CKAN open data portal in AWS cloud
The Goal We are in the design and planning phase of a new climate change-related citizen science web prototype (related to "UN Sustainable Development Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts"). The prototype will be a mobile-friendly website that allows citizens to take and submit photos and other “ground truth” observations to the Trusted Authorities, during /after floods. This information can be used to help the authorities assess and predict the flood or disaster scope and impact. Install and configure, and document/script, a prototype implementation of CKAN open data portal (https://ckan.org/) in Amazon Web Services cloud, which would allow us to gather and share environmental data sets for our citizen science and climate change-related projects. Examples of our datasets are historical climate data for Ottawa region, social media URLs for flood volunteers in the Ottawa-Gatineau region, police stations, and fire station GPS locations and contacts around Ottawa-Gatineau region etc. When a user searches for such data, the relevant datasets will be displayed and visualized. Your Contribution Demonstrate, with a working prototype, how CKAN can be setup in AWS cloud to store and display our data sets. Ensure that the prototype can be reproduced in our environment using installation and configuration documentation and/or scripts. (We use Terraform to deploy AWS cloud components but are not expecting you to provide such scripts – however if you can, bonus!)
“Trust model” for verifying citizens scientists' observations
The Goal We are in the design and planning phase of a new climate change-related citizen science web prototype (related to "UN Sustainable Development Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts"). The prototype will be a mobile-friendly website that allows citizens to take and submit photos and other “ground truth” observations to the Trusted Authorities, during /after floods. This information can be used to help the authorities assess and predict the flood or disaster scope and impact. We are building a software prototype that allows citizens to submit photos and other "ground truth" observations to the Trusted Authorities, during/after floods. Please research and recommend a “trust model” – a set of processes that we can use in the citizen science web application defining a “veracity” or trust score to citizen scientists and their observations. This will help us determine how much oversight / weight the trusted authorities should place on citizen scientists' submitted observations. We would like assistance with defining how "Trust" can be based on whether the citizen scientist undertook certain tutorials/performed certain actions/filled in their profile/confirmed their geographic location etc. Your Contribution We would like you research a trust model for verifying citizen contributions, so we can assign a trust rating that Trusted Authorities can apply to them. At the start of the project we will provide a walk-through of our prototype site and content. We will also provide a wealth of background material on the application, its use case, goals and objectives, and even detailed low-level fidelity wireframes. and other recommendations behind the proposed citizen science web application features. Below are suggestions to consider: Participants were required to be legal age/18 years or older to select a public username. Recommendation System to calculate trust based on the user's profile and history Evaluate community trust – members of the network assign trust rankings to other members or users can assign rank based on the quality and consistency of uploads Repeated interactions between those involved in citizen science, as well as perceptions of transparency, fairness, and legitimacy are important prerequisites for building or maintaining trust (Lauber, 1999; Fernandez-Gimenez et al., 2008).
Citizen science badge/gamification incentives
The Goal We are in the design and planning phase of a new climate change-related citizen science web prototype (related to "UN Sustainable Development Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts"). The prototype will be a mobile-friendly website that allows citizens to take and submit photos and other “ground truth” observations to the Trusted Authorities, during /after floods. This information can be used to help the authorities assess and predict the flood or disaster scope and impact. We are in the design and planning phase of a new citizen science prototype. In order to make it effective and easy to use, we would like to add gamification (points, badges, levels, social feedback, etc). We would like you to research gamification concepts and systems and then propose a gamification system to suit our application (ex points or badges for safely taking and sharing observations or photos during or after a flood disaster). Your work should be able to showcase: An increase in safely completed citizen climate observations An increase in citizen usage of the in-app action tracking and reporting An increase in citizen contribution to community action projects Review and recommend observations from https://scistarter.badgr.com/public/badges/6Jg_IwmfQTaJ2kUNePsO5Q Research on both intrinsic motivation (learning, developing skills, interest in environment, and social exchanges resulting in inherent satisfaction and extrinsic motivation (scoreboards and social rewards) How to ensure: - Citizens science volunteers feel that they are valued members of the team - Citizens science volunteers receive feedback and thanks and feel their work has contributed to help the community deal with the disaster Your Contribution Use your skills and creativity in all aspects of the gamification process: research, analysis, iteration, prototyping, presentation and evaluation. We would like you research the various gamification concepts, trends, issues, and solutions that are used in web apps such as FitBit, Facebook, video games, etc...then design a customized gamification system for our citizen science prototype website. At the start of the project we will provide a walk-through of our prototype site and content. We will also provide a wealth of background material on the application, its use case, goals and objectives, and even detailed low-level fidelity wireframes. and other recommendations behind the proposed citizen science web application features.
Recommend feature & design changes to our prototype to help with forest fires
The Goal We are in the design and planning phase of a new climate change-related citizen science web prototype (related to "UN Sustainable Development Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts"). The prototype will be a mobile-friendly website that allows citizens to take and submit photos and other “ground truth” observations to the Trusted Authorities, during /after floods. This information can be used to help the authorities assess and predict the flood or disaster scope and impact. We would like you to explore and document any recommendations and functionality/design modifications needed to extend our citizen science prototype, focused on floods, to help during a different type of disaster: Forest fires. We will provide screenshots and demos of our current flood prototype to help you understand and research any needed modifications. You should take into account the different needs of individuals or communities affected by forest fires, but while trying not to require us to change the existing prototype user interface, user experience, and customer journey too much. Create wireframes or mock-ups to represent the user interface changes that you think are needed to handle a forest fire disaster. Your Contribution You will be able to showcase an understanding of software design that will : Identify and recommend necessary feature/design changes to make our flood-focused prototype assist during or after a forest fire Create wireframes and mockups that show us how “citizen scientists” would use their mobile devices to (safely) conduct controlled in-situ observations during or after a forest fire disaster, that they can then upload and send to trusted authorities and data scientists. At the start of the project, we will provide a walk-through of our existing flood-focused prototype site and content. We will also provide a wealth of background material on the application, its use case, goals, and objectives, and even detailed low-level fidelity wireframes as a starting point for you.
Define the training requirements for citizen scientist web app users
The Goal We are in the design and planning phase of a new climate change-related citizen science web prototype (related to "UN Sustainable Development Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts"). The prototype will be a mobile-friendly website that allows citizens to take and submit photos and other “ground truth” observations to the Trusted Authorities, during /after floods. This information can be used to help the authorities assess and predict the flood or disaster scope and impact. We intend to train "citizen scientists" (users) on safely taking and submitting flood disaster observations using our citizen science web application prototype. What is the best approach and method to conduct the training? Focus on what is relevant to them Be clear what on what objectives your citizen science tutorial is focused on achieving Choose appropriate methods to educate your target citizen scientist audience. Based on the information we'll provide, students will develop a training requirements action plan and supporting materials, which can include ready-to-use templates, processes, strategy, and high-level training design that will support the training of users (citizen scientists). The training should also focus on ensuring that citizens scientists can safely take and submit observations that are scientifically accurate/useful. This can be achieved by addressing issues such as conflict of interest and personal biases, following guides, tools, and templates that have been developed to promote research integrity from start to finish. Examples of things to consider include: The role of experiential learning in training citizen scientists Completed life cycle journey map Strategy and templates which will improve training results Interviews and questionnaire/Quiz to assess trainee readiness and knowledge High-level design of training materials Your Contribution Use your skills and creativity in all aspects of the training requirements design process: research, analysis, iteration, presentation and evaluation. You will be able to improve our understanding of the best approach, methods, and tools to train citizen scientists/users on safely taking observations using our citizen science web application prototype. At the start of the project we will provide a walk-through of our prototype site and content. We will also provide a wealth of background material on the application, its use case, goals and objectives, and even detailed low-level fidelity wireframes. and other recommendations behind the proposed citizen science web application features.