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
2. Golden era of astronomy
9. Possible through ICT innovation
10. Possible through ICT innovation
11. Possible through ICT innovation
12. Possible through ICT innovation
13. Possible through ICT innovation
14. Same ICT innovation for companies and consumers
15. #1 ICT innovation: broadband
21. Digital data is easy to access from everywhere
22. Digital data access is blind to who you are
23. Digital data access is (mostly) blind to who you are
24. Golden era of astronomy
25. Golden era of amateur astronomy
26. http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/
33. How is this possible?
34. How is this possible? • Analog → Digital Data • Common Data Formats • Anonymous Access • Lots of scientific Meta-Data
35. How is this possible? • Analog → Digital Data • Common Data Formats • Anonymous Access • Lots of scientific Meta-Data Hidden treasures!
36. Hanny’s Voorwerp https://www.galaxyzoo.org/
37. Hanny’s Voorwerp https://www.galaxyzoo.org/
40. Citizen Science is science done by many citizens, looking at real scientific data
41. Citizen Science ⟷ Crowdsourced Data Science
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…
43. Citizen Science ⟷ Cloud Science
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?
45. But this is the challenge we’re facing!
46. ALMA
47. ALMA
48. ALMA SKA1
49. ALMA SKA1
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
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 ‘ ‘
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 ‘ ! ‘ !
55. Working on it!
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!
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!
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!
60. ¿Questions?
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…