EGU22-6319, updated on 10 Jan 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6319
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Engaging the public for water data collection – experiences from the CrowdWater project

Jan Seibert1,2, Sara Blanco1, Mirjam Scheller1, Franziska Schwarzenbach1, Wang Ze1,3, and Ilja van Meerveld1
Jan Seibert et al.
  • 1University of Zurich, Department of Geography, Zürich, Switzerland (jan.seibert@geo.uzh.ch)
  • 2Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
  • 3Faculty of Infrastructure Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China

CrowdWater is a citizen science project in which we investigate how the public can be involved in the collection of hydrological data, such as stream water levels, soil moisture conditions and the presence of water in temporary streams. Another important part is to study the value of the collected data for hydrological forecasts. Therefore, we have evaluated the potential value of citizen science observations, which might be uncertain and spotty in time, in several studies. The project's long-term goal is to collect a large number of observations and thus improve the prediction of hydrological events, such as drought or flooding, by using data collected by the public in hydrological model calibration. In this presentation, we discuss our experiences from the CrowdWater project with regard to app-based data collection and evaluation of these data. We also highlight methods to ensure data quality, including a gamified approach and machine learning for the analyses of the photos that are submitted through the app. Additionally, we will give an update on new activities in the CrowdWater project.

How to cite: Seibert, J., Blanco, S., Scheller, M., Schwarzenbach, F., Ze, W., and van Meerveld, I.: Engaging the public for water data collection – experiences from the CrowdWater project, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-6319, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6319, 2022.