Citizen Science in the era of the Square Kilometre Array

Talk given as part of the Bluedot Festival. Tries to emphasise the current trends in Citizen Science, how are they powered by the same ICT innovation that powers other industries, and how curation and metadata are key both for professional and citizen scientist, and facilities to perform that will be needed.

Transcript

1. Citizen Science in the era of
   the Square Kilometre Array
   Juande Santander-Vela
   SKA Organisation
   

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2. Golden era of astronomy
   

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9. Possible through ICT innovation
   

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10. Possible through ICT innovation
    

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11. Possible through ICT innovation
    

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12. Possible through ICT innovation
    

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13. Possible through ICT innovation
    

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14. Same ICT innovation for companies
    and consumers
    

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15. #1 ICT innovation: broadband
    

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21. Digital data is easy to
    access from everywhere
    

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22. Digital data access is
    blind to who you are
    

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23. Digital data access is
    (mostly) blind to who you are
    

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24. Golden era of astronomy
    

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25. Golden era of amateur astronomy
    

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26. http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/
    

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33. How is this possible?
    

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34. How is this possible?
    • Analog → Digital Data
    • Common Data Formats
    • Anonymous Access
    • Lots of scientific Meta-Data
    

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35. How is this possible?
    • Analog → Digital Data
    • Common Data Formats
    • Anonymous Access
    • Lots of scientific Meta-Data
    Hidden
    treasures!
    

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36. Hanny’s
    Voorwerp
    https://www.galaxyzoo.org/
    

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37. Hanny’s
    Voorwerp
    https://www.galaxyzoo.org/
    

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40. Citizen Science is science done by
    many citizens, looking at
    real scientific data
    

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41. Citizen Science ⟷ Crowdsourced
    Data Science
    

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42. Citizen Science ⟷ Crowdsourced Data Science
    • Data (and metadata!) needs to be very well curated/mantained/
    tagged so that both the existing data exposed to citizens, and the data
    provided by them, can be meaningfully linked together.
    → Spatial: Telescope Centric (Az/Alt), Earth centric (RA/Dec, FK4, FK5,
    ICRS), Solar centric (Ecliptic), Galactic centric (Galactic coordinates),
    Super galactic…
    → Temporal: UTC, TAI, Julian date, HA… and cosmology times/
    distances!
    → Observable: Polarisation, Flux…
    

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43. Citizen Science ⟷ Cloud Science
    

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44. Citizen Science ⟷ Cloud Science
    • The only way to gather everyone is in the cloud
    • Working on local copies is hard → remote tools allow for easier
    integration of contributions
    • Do you have the tool?
    • Do you know there the data is?
    • Do I have permission to change this?
    

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45. But this is the challenge we’re facing!
    

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46. ALMA
    

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47. ALMA
    

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48. ALMA SKA1
    

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49. ALMA SKA1
    

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52. What tools can we use to…
    • Visualise those datasets? → Remote vs Local visualisation
    and interaction
    • Process those datasets for additional science → Remote vs Local
    processing
    

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53. What tools can we use to…
    • Visualise those datasets? → Remote vs Local visualisation
    and interaction
    • Process those datasets for additional science → Remote vs Local
    processing
    ‘
    ‘
    

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54. What tools can we use to…
    • Visualise those datasets? → Remote vs Local visualisation
    and interaction
    • Process those datasets for additional science → Remote vs Local
    processing
    ‘ !
    ‘ !
    

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55. Working on it!
    

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56. Conclusions
    • Citizen Science is enabled by ICT… and so is science for new large
    research facilities
    • Challenges for Citizen Science are challenges for normal science in
    the SKA era
    • Citizen Science makes some new science possible ⟷
    Asynchronous Pro/Amateur collaboration
    • Techniques are multi-disciplinary, not just for astronomy!
    

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57. Conclusions
    • Citizen Science is enabled by ICT… and so is science for new large
    research facilities
    • Challenges for Citizen Science are challenges for normal science in
    the SKA era → we need to sort it out!
    • Citizen Science makes some new science possible ⟷
    Asynchronous Pro/Amateur collaboration
    • Techniques are multi-disciplinary, not just for astronomy!
    

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58. Conclusions
    • Citizen Science is enabled by ICT… and so is science for new large
    research facilities
    • Challenges for Citizen Science are challenges for normal science in
    the SKA era → we need to sort it out!
    • Citizen Science makes some new science possible ⟷
    Asynchronous Pro/Amateur collaboration → more people looking in
    the haystack!
    • Techniques are multi-disciplinary, not just for astronomy!
    

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60. ¿Questions?
    

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61. We have not spoken about…
    • Digital literacy ⟷ Coding
    • Open Data ⟷ Virtual Observatory :: Social Siences ⟷ Astronomy
    • Metadata and Curation
    • Citizen Science-like Infrastructures: e-Government,
    Integrated Healthcare…
    

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