Local researchers have developed new tools to enhance citizen science. 

The power of citizen science is growing in academic institutions, with more research projects than ever are tapping into the power of the general public. 

But researchers have struggled with ways to verify and trust the information they are getting from non-scientists or everyday people.

Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS) at QUT have developed new methods to measure and test the data in these projects.

“These new tools allow us to measure the contribution and the abilities of citizen scientists to perform tasks such as the identification of animals on images. The approach accounts for the difficulty of the task and the possibilities of guessing while allowing spatial correlation in the images,” says Dr Edgar Santos-Fernandez from ACEMS. 

The ACEMS researchers focused on citizen science projects that involve the classification of images. Their case study, titled ‘Hakuna My Data’, used responses from citizen scientists who were asked to identify species in images produced by camera traps in the Serengeti region of Africa. The cameras are activated by movement.

“This is tremendously useful to measure the prevalence of species in a given spot. But testing the quality of the data is a critical step to assure that we can obtain meaningful ecological and scientific insights,” says Dr Santos-Fernandez. 

The ACEMS team took statistical methods already used in education and psychology and extended them to measure the participants' abilities in a citizen science setting.

“They allow us to identify people with high expertise and also those who need more training. By offering feedback, many citizen scientists can increase their expertise,” says Dr Edgar Santos-Fernandez.

In addition to the quality of data, the ACEMS researchers developed the statistical tools to handle the quantity of data often produced in a citizen science project.

“Sometimes we are talking about millions of observations from thousands of people. It can be very challenging to be able to fit statistical models to data sets this large. But our methods give them the ability to do that,” says Dr Santos-Fernandez.

Finally, the ACEMS researchers developed software along with multiple statistical illustrations and visualisations, which they believe will be of use to a wide range of citizen science ecological problems.

The research has been published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution just published their research. Ecology is one area where citizen science is becoming increasingly popular.

“This is a great way to create awareness about critical issues in ecology and conservation. But just as importantly, citizen scientists can provide massive amounts of data at little or no cost,” says ACEMS Deputy Director Professor Kerrie Mengersen.