Citizen science for hydrological risk reduction and resilience building

In disaster risk management (DRM), an emerging shift has been noted from broad-scale, top-down assessments toward more participatory, community-based, bottom-up approaches. Arguably, nonscientist local stakeholders have always played an important role in knowledge risk management and resilience building within a hydrological context, such as flood response and drought alleviation. However, rapidly developing information and communication technologies such as the Internet, smartphones, and social media have already demonstrated their sizeable potential to make knowledge creation more multidirectional, decentralized, diverse, and inclusive. Combined with technologies for robust and low-cost sensor networks, a ‘citizen science’ approach has recently emerged as a promising direction in the provision of extensive, real-time information for risk management. Such projects work best when there is community buy-in, when their purpose(s) are clearly defined at the outset, and when the motivations and skillsets of all participants and stakeholders are well understood. They have great potential to enhance knowledge creation, not only for data collection, but also for analysis or interpretation. In addition, they can serve as a means of educating and empowering communities and stakeholders that are bypassed by more traditional knowledge generation processes. Here, we review the state-of-the-art of citizen science within the context of hydrological risk reduction and resilience building. Particularly when embedded within a polycentric approach toward risk governance, we argue that citizen science could complement more traditional knowledge generation practices, and also enhance innovation, adaptation, multidirectional information provision, risk management, and local resilience building.

[1]  John Gowing,et al.  Filling the observational void: Scientific value and quantitative validation of hydrometeorological data from a community-based monitoring programme , 2016 .

[2]  R. Bonney,et al.  Citizen Science as a Tool for Conservation in Residential Ecosystems , 2007 .

[3]  Marten Scheffer,et al.  Resilience thinking: integrating resilience, adaptability and transformability , 2010 .

[4]  E. Quarantelli DISASTER CRISIS MANAGEMENT: A SUMMARY OF RESEARCH FINDINGS , 1988 .

[5]  G. Brady Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action , 1993 .

[6]  Andrew R.G. Large,et al.  Demonstrating the value of community-based (‘citizen science’) observations for catchment modelling and characterisation , 2017 .

[7]  D. Collingridge,et al.  RESILIENCE, FLEXIBILITY, AND DIVERSITY IN MANAGING THE RISKS OF TECHNOLOGIES David Collingridge Introduction , 2003 .

[8]  Simon Stisen,et al.  Citizen science: A new perspective to advance spatial pattern evaluation in hydrology , 2017, PloS one.

[9]  Melanie J. Duncan,et al.  Increasing resilience to natural hazards through crowd-sourcing in St. Vincent and the Grenadines , 2015 .

[10]  L. Kruger,et al.  Getting to Know Ourselves and Our Places Through Participation in Civic Social Assessment , 2000 .

[11]  Yong Liu,et al.  Going Beyond Citizen Data Collection with Mapster: A Mobile+Cloud Real-Time Citizen Science Experiment , 2011, 2011 IEEE Seventh International Conference on e-Science Workshops.

[12]  Daniel H. Cole,et al.  Advantages of a polycentric approach to climate change policy , 2015 .

[13]  Wouter Buytaert,et al.  High‐resolution satellite‐gauge merged precipitation climatologies of the Tropical Andes , 2016 .

[14]  Mordechai Haklay,et al.  Participatory monitoring of poaching in the Congo basin , 2013 .

[15]  Jack Stilgoe,et al.  The Public Value of Science: Or How to Ensure That Science Really Matters , 2005 .

[16]  M. Haklay Citizen Science and Volunteered Geographic Information: Overview and Typology of Participation , 2013 .

[17]  Rick Bonney,et al.  The history of public participation in ecological research , 2012 .

[18]  Helen E. Roy,et al.  Choosing and using citizen science: a guide to when and how to use citizen science to monitor biodiversity and the environment , 2014 .

[19]  Christopher S Lowry,et al.  CrowdHydrology: Crowdsourcing Hydrologic Data and Engaging Citizen Scientists , 2013, Ground water.

[20]  Joseph E. A. Huddart,et al.  Citizen science: from detecting pollution to evaluating ecological restoration , 2016 .

[21]  Joern Birkmann,et al.  Measuring Vulnerability to Natural Hazards: towards disaster resilient societies , 2007 .

[22]  Wouter Buytaert,et al.  User-driven design of decision support systems for polycentric environmental resources management , 2017, Environ. Model. Softw..

[23]  L. Wald,et al.  "Report a Landslide” A website to engage the public in identifying geologic hazards , 2014 .

[24]  Margreth Keiler,et al.  Challenges of analyzing multi-hazard risk: a review , 2012, Natural Hazards.

[25]  Eric Gaume,et al.  Surveying flash floods: gauging the ungauged extremes , 2008 .

[26]  Masaki Hayashi,et al.  Community‐Based Groundwater Monitoring Network Using a Citizen‐Science Approach , 2016, Ground water.

[27]  Peter P. Marra,et al.  Linking place-based citizen science with large-scale conservation research: A case study of bird-building collisions and the role of professional scientists , 2015 .

[28]  Thomas J. Stohlgren,et al.  Assessing citizen science data quality: an invasive species case study , 2011 .

[29]  Wouter Buytaert,et al.  Citizen Science for Water Resources Management: Toward Polycentric Monitoring and Governance? , 2016 .

[30]  E. Ostrom Polycentric systems for coping with collective action and global environmental change , 2010 .

[31]  Feng Mao,et al.  A conceptual framework for assessing socio-hydrological resilience under change , 2016 .

[32]  S. Mulder,et al.  The how and why of societal publications for citizen science projects and scientists , 2014, International Journal of Biometeorology.

[33]  Joseph M. Hellerstein,et al.  Using Mobile Technology and Social Networking to Crowdsource Citizen Science , 2012 .

[34]  Jack Stilgoe,et al.  Citizen Scientists: Reconnecting Science with Civil Society , 2009 .

[35]  Jó Ueyama,et al.  Development of a spatial decision support system for flood risk management in Brazil that combines volunteered geographic information with wireless sensor networks , 2015, Comput. Geosci..

[36]  Bernhard Höfle,et al.  Using participatory geographic approaches for urban flood risk in Santiago de Chile: Insights from a governance analysis , 2016 .

[37]  T. Karpouzoglou,et al.  Advancing adaptive governance of social-ecological systems through theoretical multiplicity , 2016 .

[38]  Jérôme Le Coz,et al.  Crowdsourced data for flood hydrology: Feedback from recent citizen science projects in Argentina, France and New Zealand , 2016 .

[39]  C. Findlay,et al.  The Rauischholzhausen Agenda for Road Ecology , 2007 .

[40]  L. Bharati,et al.  Integrated water resources management in Nepal: key stakeholders' perceptions and lessons learned , 2015 .

[41]  Hidde Leijnse,et al.  The potential of urban rainfall monitoring with crowdsourced automatic weather stations in Amsterdam , 2016 .

[42]  S. Lane,et al.  Doing flood risk science differently: an experiment in radical scientific method , 2011 .

[43]  James P. Lewis,et al.  Development in Disaster-Prone Places: Studies of Vulnerability , 1999 .

[44]  O. Jones,et al.  Building local/lay flood knowledges into community flood resilience planning after the July 2007 floods, Gloucestershire, UK , 2012 .

[45]  Ortwin Renn,et al.  Risk governance , 2011 .

[46]  Jiancheng Shi,et al.  The Future of Earth Observation in Hydrology. , 2017, Hydrology and earth system sciences.

[47]  Kirk Martinez,et al.  Environmental Sensor Networks: A revolution in the earth system science? , 2006 .

[48]  J. Cohn Citizen Science: Can Volunteers Do Real Research? , 2008 .

[49]  N. Oliver,et al.  People power , 2014, Nature.

[50]  Monika Sester,et al.  Areal rainfall estimation using moving cars – computer experimentsincluding hydrological modeling , 2015 .

[51]  Wouter Buytaert,et al.  Environmental Virtual Observatories ( EVOs ) , 2016 .

[52]  Abby J. Kinchy,et al.  Sense and Influence: Environmental Monitoring Tools and the Power of Citizen Science , 2016 .

[53]  R. Kattelmann,et al.  Glacial Lake Outburst Floods in the Nepal Himalaya: A Manageable Hazard? , 2003 .

[54]  C. Sadoff,et al.  Water security in one blue planet: twenty-first century policy challenges for science , 2013, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[55]  S. Arnstein,et al.  Ladder of Citizen Participation , 2020 .

[56]  T. Karpouzoglou,et al.  HESS Opinions: A conceptual framework for assessing socio-hydrological resilience under change , 2017 .

[57]  Christian Hergarten,et al.  Citizen science in hydrology and water resources: opportunities for knowledge generation, ecosystem service management, and sustainable development , 2014, Front. Earth Sci..

[58]  Ortwin Renn,et al.  Global Risk Governance , 2008 .

[59]  Gemma Carr,et al.  Stakeholder and public participation in river basin management—an introduction , 2015, WIREs. Water.

[60]  Sajda Qureshi,et al.  Are we making a Better World with Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) Research? Findings from the Field and Theory Building , 2015, Inf. Technol. Dev..

[61]  Arun Kumar Pratihast,et al.  Combining Satellite Data and Community-Based Observations for Forest Monitoring , 2014 .

[62]  R. Schumer,et al.  Rain or Snow: Hydrologic Processes, Observations, Prediction, and Research Needs , 2016 .

[63]  Ortwin Renn,et al.  Inclusive risk governance: concepts and application to environmental policy making , 2009 .

[64]  I. Strangeways Measuring the natural environment , 2000 .

[65]  R. Bonney,et al.  Citizen Science: Public Participation in Environmental Research , 2012 .

[66]  Roger W. Harris How ICT4D Research Fails the Poor , 2016, Inf. Technol. Dev..

[67]  Raffaele Filieri,et al.  ICTs in Developing Countries: Research, Practices and Policy Implications , 2016 .

[68]  René van der Wal,et al.  To have your citizen science cake and eat it? Delivering research and outreach through Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) , 2016, BMC Ecology.

[69]  Anna J. L. Carr Policy Reviews and Essays , 2004 .

[70]  J. Gaillard Vulnerability, capacity and resilience: Perspectives for climate and development policy , 2010 .

[71]  B. Wisner,et al.  At Risk: Natural Hazards, People's Vulnerability and Disasters , 1996 .

[72]  E. Hand,et al.  Citizen science: People power , 2010, Nature.

[73]  M. Swan Crowdsourced Health Research Studies: An Important Emerging Complement to Clinical Trials in the Public Health Research Ecosystem , 2012, Journal of medical Internet research.

[74]  Nozha Boujemaa,et al.  Visual-based plant species identification from crowdsourced data , 2011, ACM Multimedia.

[75]  Lynn A. Bryan,et al.  The Future of Citizen Science , 2012 .

[76]  B. Lankford,et al.  The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Monocentric and polycentric river basin management. , 2010 .

[77]  Yuwan Malakar Community-Based Rainfall Observation for Landslide Monitoring in Western Nepal , 2014 .

[78]  A. Kirschenbaum Chaos Organization and Disaster Management , 2019 .

[79]  Terje Aven,et al.  On risk governance deficits , 2011 .

[80]  Johanna Alkan Olsson,et al.  Possibilities and problems with the use of models as a communication tool in water resource management , 2006 .

[81]  M. Edelstein Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise and Sustainable Development , 1998 .

[82]  V. Entwistle,et al.  Lay perspectives: advantages for health research , 1998, BMJ.

[83]  Shamsul Fakhruddin,et al.  UNISDR Science and Technology Conference on the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 , 2016 .

[84]  Christian Stock,et al.  3D visualisation of spatial information and environmental process model outputs for collaborative data exploration , 2005, Ninth International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV'05).

[85]  D. Leibovici,et al.  Rapid flood inundation mapping using social media, remote sensing and topographic data , 2017, Natural Hazards.

[86]  M. Angrist Eyes wide open: the personal genome project, citizen science and veracity in informed consent. , 2009, Personalized medicine.

[87]  J. Ballesteros-Cánovas,et al.  A review of flood records from tree rings , 2015 .

[88]  Ortwin Renn Risk Governance: Coping with Uncertainty in a Complex World , 2008 .