Harnessing 'citizen science' to reinforce resilience to environmental disasters:creating an evidence base and community of practice

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'Citizen science', or the participation of 'non-specialists' in the gathering or analysis of scientific data, is playing an increasingly important role in scientific research. It is an excellent way for citizens to contribute to the forecasting and warning of hazards that impact them and could be particularly helpful in low and middle income countries. in these regions, citizen science also has the potential to generate shared understandings of hazardous phenomena, improve communication and help communities at risk take actions to improve their resilience during and after hazardous events. From earlier volcano-related research projects we have evidence that working with communities at risk to gather data and make observations of natural phenomena does help them reduce their risk. It also helps both scientists and community members cope with the uncertainty around hazardous phenomena by helping them to devise strategies that minimise impacts on lives and livelihoods. Researchers working on other hazards have also found this to be the case. There are many challenges in moving from the theory regarding the usefulness of citizen science to the practice of making a project work. What we want to do is (A) understand how we should use 'citizen science' to address these challenges and build resilience to environmental hazards (B) create and nurture an international transdisciplinary community of practice to contribute to future projects (B). We will involve addressing the following objectives: (1) learn lessons and synthesise knowledge from previous citizen science programs and existing initiatives;(2) understand what the barriers to success are with these types of project and try to break them down. We think this means we will have to widen our thinking about citizen science techniques, in new ways. We will incorporate methodologies and techniques from the humanities and we include important lessons from the theory and best practices in international development. We will try to address tensions between 'bottom-up' or community driven practices and 'top-down' or technocratic approaches to gathering data. We will also meet these aims and objectives by using a case study-based approach to frame our thinking about how this will work best for the citizens at risk from environmental hazards. Citizens are at the heart of this project and so we will use conversations with communities in three contrasting study sites (Ecuador, the English-speaking Caribbean and Nepal) to inform our synthesis and critical analysis of the challenges encountered in country.To achieve these aims we have brought together a group of researchers across all relevant fields, and will use our research to create a new community of practice. Each investigator will act as a 'champion' for their specialism to quickly draw together a grouping of experts to attend an initial workshop and we will use the discussion there to inform a synthesis of relevant initiatives and existing evidence. That synthesis will be used to critically reflect on the barriers to success. During this, we will address the tensions between participatory approaches to development focussed on the communities and their empowerment and engagement and more traditional scientific methods driven by the need for knowledge and data coming from the scientists. We will also work to understand the contribution that narratives and narrative analysis bring to the overall goals of 'citizen science' initiatives, and how they might help to equalise relationships within a project. We'll produce an analysis of what might help projects in the future successfully use citizen science to empower communities to deal with natural hazards. We will also increase everyone's knowledge of this field. We will share this analysis with the communities where we work and have designed our case studies to be used by initiatives already in place to increase community resilience in those regions.