We are big fans of citizen science! Of course, science is always cool, and STEM/STEAM projects are an increasing part of everyone’s work and school experiences. So understanding how science works is not just fun, but a good way to understand what is going on in the world around us all.
So we are sharing some neat science you can do, contributing toward large projects, and learning new things. Maybe you can use this today; maybe you will save it for later. As long as you enjoy some exploration and learning new things – citizen science is for you! And it is definitely something you can use to bring some good programming to your library.
Check out this week’s project from SciStarter:
| Presented By | UNITAR-UNOSAT |
|---|---|
| Goal | Extract data from photos coming out of disaster situations |
| Task | Analyse photos coming out of disaster situations |
| Where | View map… |
| Description | Photos taken in disaster situations and other humanitarian crises by different people on the ground can potentially be a powerful resource for the response teams. In fact, the information we gain from these images can be crucial to provide humanitarian aid not only in the immediate response effort, but also in future recovery and preparedness work. Unfortunately, the manpower needed to process the incredible number of photos coming out of these situations makes this duty impossible for a single organization. Therefore we are turning to the crowd and looking for volunteers to help us rapidly extract meaningful, relevant and structured data from these photos. This is why we launched the GeoTag-X platform, which gathers a series of pilot projects (for example, the Emergency Shelter Assessment project) covering different disaster related events. GeoTag-X asks people to analyse the photographs associated with each event by answering some short and strictly structured questions. Our final aim is to have an open source tool and associated analysis questions that can be taken by anyone working in an humanitarian crisis and quickly and easily adapted to their needs. To do so, we need as many volunteers as possible to help us assess GeoTag-X’s suitability as a tool in disaster response. See more |
| How to get started | Visit www.geotagx.org, choose a project, and start contributing! |
| Social Media | Follow Geotag-X on Twitter |
| Total expense | 0.00 |
| Ideal Age Group | Adults, College, High school (14 – 17 years), |
| Spend the time | Indoors |
| Ideal Frequency | Unspecified |
| Average Time | |
| Type of Activity | Exclusively online, Emergency Response, At home, |
| Topics | Ecology & Environment, Climate & Weather, Geology & Earth Science, Food, Nature & Outdoors, |
| Media Mentions & Publications | Citizen Scientists Like You Could Change How We Handle Iraq’s Humanitarian Crisis |
| Tags | agriculture, disaster, photos, response, shelter, the crowd and the cloud, |
| Sustainable Development Goals | Relevant Sustainable Development Goals, identified by  ?:Sustainable Cities and Communities Climate Action Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions |
| Website | Geotag-X |
And if you want to bring in a few of these ideas to your library, it is useful to have a variety of different program strategies to help share this project. We have a few suggestions to help you get started:
- Identify some of the disasters that might happen in your area. Write a disaster plan so you are ready for it
- Find information about taking the best photos. Take a few pictures, maybe of books, and bring them to the library to display
- If you enjoy true crime stories, make a list of the most interesting books or podcasts on this genre
- How do you identify the most important details in a new story, a picture, or a book? Either have a conversation about this, or write an essay giving tips