On 19th to 21st May, the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) held its first international conference in Berlin. The event attracted scientists, practitioners, and of course citizens engaged in scientific projects from all over the world. Several tracks of presentations and discussions highlighted the current hot topics in citizen science, like learning and education through citizen science, scientific impacts and innovations triggered by citizen science, citizen science gaming, data quality, and many more. Ca. 100 posters presented state-of-the-art ideas, methods and results. Inspiring key notes by Rock Bonney, Lucy Robinson, Muki Haklay and Heribert Hofer set the stage for intensive discussions and exchange of ideas. The conference also witnessed the appearence of the first issue of the new journal Citizen Science – Theory and Practice, a publication of the Citizen Science Association (CSA, https://citizenscienceassociation.org/). Rick Bonney, one of the co-editors-in-chief, used the conference to encourage high-quality submissions from all areas of citizen science.
The GIScience research group at Heidelberg University is well in step with current developments in citizen science and related fields with projects on landuse monitoring, participation in urban planning, data quality in citizen science, and many more. Visit http://www.geog.uni-heidelberg.de/gis/forschung_en.html to learn more about our activities.
More information about the ECSA can be found here: http://ecsa.citizen-science.net/
Read more about the First International ECSA Conference here: http://www.ecsa2016.eu/index.html
Learn about Citizen Science – Theory and Practice: http://theoryandpractice.citizenscienceassociation.org/
