The First Italian Citizen Science Conference

The First Italian Citizen Science Conference will take place in Rome on 23–25 November 2017 at the Italian National Research Council. Three full days and 43 speakers to make the point on the state of the art in Italy of this new approach to science and to environmental sciences in particular. Several significant Italian projects will be presented in the light of the European experience, represented by the European Citizen Science Association, and by researchers of the Imperial College (London), the Helmholtz Centre (Leipzig), The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (Copenhagen) and the participation of the major European citizen science networks from Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Citizen Science has established itself more and more as an approach that can offer efficient monitoring systems and environment managing tools, with special attention to the intrinsic value that Citizen Science initiatives and projects have on the education and training of citizens. The First World Conference organised by the Citizen Science Association was held in San José (CA) on February 2015, whereas the First International Conference of the European Association of Citizen Science was hosted in Berlin on May 2016.

The Rome Conference will be the occasion to meet, share and debate ideas, methodologies, problems and perspectives of Citizen Science. Among the themes are: planning of protocols, data managing, results validation, citizen scientists recruitment, results dissemination as well as good practices for the development and management of web platforms.

The event is promoted by the Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL, in partnership with LifeWatch-ITA, the National Association of Scientific Museums, the Maremma Museum of Natural History, CSMON-Life, LTER-Italia and the European Citizen Science Association, with the support of the Italian National Research Council in the framework of the European Infrastructure LifeWatch initiatives.

For more information and registration, please visit www.citizensciencerome2017.com

2018 International Summer School on “Data Management in Environmental and Earth Science Infrastructures”

Between the 9 –13 July, around 40 academics, researchers, PhD students, data managers and research infrastructure developers coming from all across Europe gathered in Lecce, to join the International Summer School on “Data Management in Environmental and Earth Science Infrastructures: theory and practice”, organised by the H2020 ENVRIplus and LifeWatch Service Centre.

In recent years, one of the major challenges in environmental and earth science has been managing and using continuously growing volumes of data collected across multiple disciplines, and educating both scientists and developers on how best to do so. Many different standards, approaches, and tools have now been developed to support the research data lifecycle, which need to be examined and, where appropriate, adopted by a wider community. In particular, modern semantic technologies provide a promising way to properly describe and interrelate different data sources in ways that reduce barriers to data discovery, integration, and exchange among environmental and ecological resources and the researchers who use them.

To address these challenges, ENVRIplus and the LifeWatch Service Centre organised a five-day summer school providing an unique insight into the contemporary debate on data management in the environmental and earth sciences. The programme, combining theory with hands-on sessions, explored themes as diverse as reference modelling and research metadata semantics, data processing and e-infrastructure, identification and citation, cataloguing and provenance, and closed presenting two use cases on data management in the context of LifeWatch Italy.

“Both ENVRIplus and the LifeWatch Service Centre have been working on these topics and have already organised dedicated workshops and training sessions in recent years.” say the organisers, Nicola Fiore (LifeWatch Service Centre) and Zhiming Zhao (ENVRIplus). “This year we decided to move forward and propose a full International Summer School; its participants were enthusiastic about the programme and so we are already at work on a 2019 edition”.