Building Together — RIECS-Concept’s First Global Co-Design Exchange
🧩 How do we co-create a citizen science infrastructure that meets real needs, across disciplines, regions, and communities?
✳️ That was the focus of RIECS-Concept’s first in-person co-design event, held on May 28, 2025, during #CAPS2025 in Portland, Oregon.
✳️ Through a dynamic World Café format, participants rotated across four collaborative tables to explore the pillars of participatory science infrastructure:
Technology & Interoperability
✅ Participants explored how citizen science platforms could work together. Ideas included:
- Unified login tools across platforms
- Natural language interfaces to broaden access
- Open, well-documented algorithms to ensure ethical AI integration
- Data provenance that honors both technical and cultural context
Governance & Ethics
✅ Discussions highlighted the need for:
- Adaptive ethics frameworks that evolve with technology
- Tiered data access for safety and sovereignty
- Diverse governance bodies that outlast geopolitical shifts
- Community-owned data platforms
Engagement & Inclusion
✅ Access must be intentional. Participants envisioned:
- Compensation models for under-resourced communities
- Intergenerational mentoring
- Paper-based and multilingual interfaces
- Peer-to-peer spaces instead of top-down communication
Policy & Sustainability
✅ Making citizen science matter to policymakers requires:
- Visualization tools that translate complex data
- Personal relationships and bridge roles
- Legal frameworks for long-term funding
- Standardized datasets aligned with SDGs and local priorities
📌 This exchange wasn’t just about knowledge — it was about values. And as RIECS moves forward, these conversations will continue to shape the way we design a truly inclusive European infrastructure.
📢 Stay tuned — more updates are coming soon ❗
✨ The full report on the outcomes of the symposium Shaping Tomorrow’s Citizen Science Research Infrastructure, which was held on May 28, 2025, as part of the Conference for Advancing Participatory Sciences (CAPS 2025) at Portland State University. It was prepared by the RIECS-Concept project consortium and can be viewed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15771727 and in RIECS-Concept website reports.
Published 2025-08-06