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.

A user-oriented design of the new services is driven by stakeholders in society, government, industry, academia, agencies, and research, who co-design 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, 52°North supports networking, dissemination and international standardization activities.

During 2020, 52°North contributed to several project activities. An important element was the design of an agile development methodology. For this, we relied on our experiences with the management and coordination of distributed, international software development. We also contributed to the design of the project’s system architecture. With a particular emphasis on interoperability, our team cooperated closely with CREAF and Digital Dimensions to explore best practices for applying the OGC SensorThings API to Citizen Science observation data. Furthermore, 52°North conducted experiments to explore options for combining single-sign-on technologies with Sensor Web components.