With many new and on-going citizen projects planned or underway within the High Impact Weather community, this project is designed to share information and to provide tools to help groups and agencies develop citizen science activities. Activities started in 2020 and more initiatives are lined up for 2021. See the update report for more details.  Below are highlights and planned activities.

Demonstration Projects

This activity aims to provide a platform for citizen science projects to be showcased through HIWeather supported web platforms. Starting July 2021, we will share citizen science projects every two weeks. Projects will be scoped out by the team highlighting innovative citizen science initiatives. The feature stories will demonstrate different exciting projects around the globe! Stay tuned to learn more about the motivations, experiences, and future plans of these citizen science projects. To keep up to date on the demonstration projects, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or WeChat!

Towards the later part of 2021, an open call for groups to submit video content, as part of a HIWeather Citizen Science Grand Challenge will be administered. 

Online Seminars

• In partnership with the Young Earth Systems Scientist (YESS) Community, we delivered a webinar series in 2020 on the topic ‘Exploring the role of citizen science in weather, climate, and related projects. The materials are available to view at https://www.yess-community.org/yess-hiweather-webinar-series/. 
• During the 2020 HIWeather Workshop, we ran a one-day session with invited speakers discussing ‘Successful Citizen Science’. A Compilation of the video recording of the citizen science presentations is available at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3z777DAr7XJm6T4shlmxJAMdHHEo7a8V
• We plan to maintain the partnership with YESS-Community to deliver webinars or workshops. The Citizen Science working group will continue to explore a range of workshops/ conferences/ training opportunities through 2021 on citizen science, aimed at sharing practice, creating new networks for knowledge sharing and collaboration.

Guidance Note

This activity involves the development of a “A guidance note for including citizen science in weather, climate and water projects”. The note outlines the definition of citizen science, provides a typology of Citizen Science projects, and illustrates examples of different types of citizen science projects. The note also raises guide questions for project managers of citizen sciences projects. The guidance note is available for download from the WMO library at https://library.wmo.int/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=21966.  

Special Issue 

A call for papers has gone out for a special issue on citizen science of the Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies. The special issue will bring together accounts of the research, policy and practice initiatives from researchers, practitioners and the wider HIWeather and other disaster risk reduction community. Papers have been submitted and currently undergoing review. The resulting special issue will be published online, with open access at no cost to authors or readers. The issue is planned to be released this 2021.

Want to get involved? Or have queries regarding the Citizen Science Project? Please contact Marion Tan at M.L.Tan@massey.ac.nz