Description
REINFORCE (Research Infrastructures FOR citizens in Europe) is a Research & Innovation Project, supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 SWAFS “Science with and for Society” work programme.
The project will create a series of cutting-edge citizen science projects on frontier Physics research, with citizen scientists making a genuine and valued contribution to managing the data avalanche. More than 100,000 citizens will be engaged in the research done in Large Research Infrastructures through a participatory design methodology that will take into account the special characteristics of different target groups, their barriers and constraints, their perceptions and biases and their attitudes and knowledge regarding science
They will use real and simulated data for analysis, simple affordable detectors and instrumentation to measure properties of objects such as cosmic rays, providing among others their contributions in large infrastructure site specific parameters such as environmental impacts and noise. Furthermore, through the use of open data as with dedicated training activities on their use and analysis, citizens will be able to perform their own inquiries, guided and supported by the REINFORCE experts.
Aim
Citizen science interventions are becoming more and more relevant across all scientific disciplines and the humanities and it can potentially bring a wide variety of benefits to researchers, citizens, policy makers and society across the research and innovation cycle. Nevertheless, there are difficulties setting up citizen science initiatives, for example in terms of choosing the optimum methodologies and ensuring balanced participation of citizens.
Furthermore, questions remain unanswered about the potential of citizen science for society: what is the potential number of citizen scientists and who are they? What are the costs and benefits of citizen science?
REINFORCE will aim to answer these questions by engaging more than 100,000 citizens in the research done in Large Research Infrastructures through a participatory design methodology that will take into account the special characteristics of different target groups, their barriers and constrains, their perceptions and biases and their attitudes and knowledge regarding science.
How to participate
REINFORCE is built on the Zooniverse platform, known as the world’s largest platform for online citizen science, allowing researchers across Europe and beyond to build and run their own projects without requiring software development expertise, at the same time giving participants the chance to focus on skills development, playing a full role in scientific exploration.
Equipment
PC and access to Internet