Cos4Cloud - Co-designed Citizen Observatories Services for the EOS Cloud

Co-designed Citizen Observatories Services for the EOS Cloud

Developing interoperable components to support Citizen Science projects via the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)

COS4CLOUD (Co-designed citizen observatories for the EOS-Cloud) aims to design, prototype and implement services that address the Open Science challenges shared by citizen observatories active in the fields of biodiversity and environmental quality monitoring. To support citizen observatories, project work focuses on the development of services that help improve the data and information quality. Technologies used to implement these services include deep machine learning, automatic video recognition, advanced mobile app interfaces, and other cutting-edge technologies based on data models and data protocols validated by traditional science. The new services will provide mechanisms to ensure the visibility and recognition of data contributors and tools to improve networking between various stakeholders. Novel innovative digital services will be developed by integrating Citizen Science products generated by different providers. The consortium implements the services according to open standards to ensure their interoperability. The European Open Science Cloud hub provides an agile, fit-for-purpose and sustainable site, including a discovery service, to both traditional and citizen scientists.

Stakeholders in society, government, industry, academia, agencies, and research drive a useroriented design of the new services by co-designing the service requirements. Cos4Cloud integrates Citizen Science in the European Open Science Cloud, bringing Citizen Science projects as a service to the scientific community and society at large.

52°North contributes to the architecture definition and development of interoperability standards, profiles and best practices. We lead the project work on defining an agile development methodology. Our other contributions include interoperability, conformance and performance testing activities as well as the evaluation of technology readiness levels. Additionally, we support networking, dissemination and international standardization activities.

During 2021, our team extended and refined a fit-for-purpose agile methodology, respecting the individual differences of all partners. It frames the technical development and co-design process throughout the project’s lifetime. In addition, we are creating an agile testing plan to ensure that the developed features and the integration of citizen observatories will feed the overall purpose of the Cos4Cloud project.

Our software engineers also contributed to the service architecture development with a particular focus on interoperability. We contributed to the STA+ extension for the SensorThings API (v1.1). This leverages data modeling and workflows within citizen observatories. The extension not only covers aspects focused on citizen science, but also on observation ownership and relationships, for example, and can be also applied on other domains. We have presented and discussed the STA+ extension closely within the OGC community and will prepare it as a “Best Practice Paper”.