Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - How reliable are citizen‐derived scientific data?
T2 - assessing the quality of contrail observations made by the general public
AU - Fowler, Amy
AU - Whyatt, Duncan
AU - Davies, Gemma
AU - Ellis, Rebecca
PY - 2013/8
Y1 - 2013/8
N2 - Citizen science projects encourage the general public to participate in scientific research. Participants can contribute large volumes of data over broad spatial and temporal frames; however the challenge is to generate data of sufficient quality to be useable in scientific research. Most observations made by citizen‐scientists can be independently verified by ‘experts’. However, verification is more problematic when the phenomena being recorded are short‐lived. This paper uses a GIS methodology to verify the quality of contrail observations made by the general public as part of the OPAL Climate Survey. We verify observations using datasets derived from a variety of different sources (experts, models and amateur enthusiasts) with different spatial and temporal properties which reflect the complex 3D nature of the atmosphere. Our results suggest that ~70% of citizen observations are plausible based on favourable atmospheric conditions and the presence or absence of aircraft; a finding which is in keeping with other, more conventional citizen science projects. However, questions remain as to why the quality of the citizen‐based observations was so high. Given the lack of supporting data on observers, it is impossible to determine whether the dataset was generated by the activities of many participants or a small but dedicated number of individual observers.
AB - Citizen science projects encourage the general public to participate in scientific research. Participants can contribute large volumes of data over broad spatial and temporal frames; however the challenge is to generate data of sufficient quality to be useable in scientific research. Most observations made by citizen‐scientists can be independently verified by ‘experts’. However, verification is more problematic when the phenomena being recorded are short‐lived. This paper uses a GIS methodology to verify the quality of contrail observations made by the general public as part of the OPAL Climate Survey. We verify observations using datasets derived from a variety of different sources (experts, models and amateur enthusiasts) with different spatial and temporal properties which reflect the complex 3D nature of the atmosphere. Our results suggest that ~70% of citizen observations are plausible based on favourable atmospheric conditions and the presence or absence of aircraft; a finding which is in keeping with other, more conventional citizen science projects. However, questions remain as to why the quality of the citizen‐based observations was so high. Given the lack of supporting data on observers, it is impossible to determine whether the dataset was generated by the activities of many participants or a small but dedicated number of individual observers.
KW - Contrails
KW - Ephemeral Data
KW - spatio-temporal analysis
KW - Data quality
KW - Verification
U2 - 10.1111/tgis.12034
DO - 10.1111/tgis.12034
M3 - Journal article
VL - 17
SP - 488
EP - 506
JO - Transactions in GIS
JF - Transactions in GIS
SN - 1361-1682
IS - 4
ER -