Citizen Science at the. U.S. Geological Survey

Transcription

1 Citizen Science at the U.S. Geological Survey David Applegate USGS Associate Director for Natural Hazards NRC Board on Earth Science & Resources December 5, 2014 U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey

2 Crowdsourced Data and Social Media: An Infrastructure for Assessing & Monitoring Hazards, Geographic Data, and Ecological Systems Did You Feel It? Did You See It? Is Ash Falling? TED: Tweet Earthquake Dispatch Netquake Sensor Volunteers icoast Did the Coast Change? National Map Corps National Phenology Network

3 Did You Feel It? Rapid & automatic intensity maps based on felt reports submitted online. Users answer simple online questionnaire. Color-code ZIP-code to community s average intensity. Replaces traditional postal questionnaire. M5.8 Virginia Aug, 2011

4 Using DYFI to improve ShakeMap

5 Did You Feel It? comparison: Earthquakes are felt over much larger area in Eastern U.S. Dots represent areas where people reported at least weak shaking M6.0 earthquake Central California Sept. 28, 2004 M5.8 earthquake Central Virginia August 23, 2011

6 10 Years of DYFI Data (~2 million responses) USGS National Seismic Hazard Map (2% in 50 Year Probability of Exceedence)

7 Did You See It? Landslide Reporting Enables crowdsourced, online landslide reports Qualitative information may be used in USGS reports

8 Is Ash Falling? New system collects public ash fall observations and accumulations Users browsing the Alaska Volcano Observatory site during an eruption invited to submit observations. Information received from the public through this tool will help USGS and NWS scientists track eruption clouds, track ash fallout, and refine ash fall modeling efforts

9 Is Ash Falling? Online Interface

10 TED: Tweet Earthquake Dispatch Alerts for earthquakes worldwide with M Magnitude descriptor, location, origin time, link to USGS webpage. Alerts include frequency of tweets in event region that contain the word earthquake or its equivalent in several languages.

11 NetQuakes volunteers sensor hosts

12 icoast Did the Coast Change? Crowdsourcing to Groundtruth Prediction Models Compare and classify aerial photos of the coast before and after Hurricane Sandy Ground truth and generate coastal change predictions using a Bayesian Network Educate the public about coastal vulnerability from extreme storms coastal.er.usgs.gov/icoast

13 National Map Corps Crowdsourcing used to update USGS geographic data Volunteers mapping structures National program Nearing 2,000 volunteers 100,000 points edited or added since mid-2013 Data become part of The National Map

14 A critical tool for enabling adaptive responses to climate change Phenology Phenology: the study of seasonal plant and animal life cycle events Is simple to record and understand Integrates biological and physical processes across scales Informs human & ecosystem health, agriculture, recreation Data + models = human adaptation to climate change Nature's Notebook A national monitoring initiative for scientists & citizens Engages agencies, NGOs, academia, public Standard protocols for plants & animals Quality observations from 1000s of observing stations On-line data entry, tools, maps, stories, downloads Provides capacity for other science networks (e.g., NEON) Education: train future scientists, improve data quality Remote sensing facilitates scaling from leaf to globe The Great Sunflower Project Modeled "onset of spring" (2014)

15 USGS is part of widespread Federal interest in citizen science & crowdsourcing White House National Action Plan for Open Government released in 2013 specifically calls for increased crowdsourcing and citizen science programs. An Open Innovation Toolkit is in development for Federal agencies. This will include best practices, training, and policies related to prizes, crowdsourcing, and citizen science. USGS is part of the new Federal Community of Practice on Citizen Science & Crowdsourcing which meets monthly to share lessons learned and develop best practices for designing, implementing, and evaluating crowdsourcing and citizen science initiatives. Currently 27 agencies participate.

16 Further information on USGS citizen science Scientists Need Your Eyes & Ears ntists-need-your-eyes-and-ears/ USGS MyScience website txpub.usgs.gov/myscience/ Any questions?