RIECS-Concept. Towards A Pan-European Research Infrastructure For Excellent Citizen Science
The RIECS-Concept will set the basis for a unique research infrastructure that consolidates citizen science in Europe. The conceptualisation will engage multiple stakeholders, to reiterate the importance of involving society in research processes.
To design an infrastructure for projects that make use of both typical citizen resources – such as mobile apps, amateur scientific kits or personal accessibility, and professional scientific resources – such as databases, federated computing and storage facilities, citizen science platforms, and dedicated personnel, RIECS-Concept has defined three key objectives: to assess the feasibility and address the challenges of building such an infrastructure, develop a strategic roadmap for it, as finally, foster an open and participatory governance model for it.
Furthermore, the initial concept will focus on three scientific areas – environmental observations, health, and climate change – to facilitate engagement and address cross-cutting issues.
Platform Europe is committed to Citizen Science both as a method of participatory engagement, and as a cornerstone of the future of democratic discourse. Citizen Science is perhaps the best illustration of the intrinsic connection between the evolution of (engagement) practices and socio-political narratives.
Ars Electronica plays an active role in the stakeholder engagement process throughout the entire project. A key moment of our involvement will occur in 2026, when we will host a citizen science summit at the Ars Electronica Festival, where different stakeholders will come together to work on their specific challenges and share perspectives. This will further advance the RIECS concept in the upcoming years and encourage its uptake by the citizen science community.
RIECS-Concept continues the work we started in IMPETUS.
#RIECS_concept
More coming soon
Duration: 01.01.2025 – 31.12.2027
Partners (Consortium): Fundacion Ibercivis (co-coordinator), European Citizen Science Association (co-coordinator), Ars Electronica, Spanish National Research Council, Agency for Education and Internationalisation, Centre for Social Innovation GmbH, The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Malmö University, University of Milano-Bicocca, Center for the Promotion of Science, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Citizen Science Global Partnership, University of Zurich
RIECS-Concept is funded by the call HORIZON-INFRA-2024-DEV-01-01 – Research infrastructure concept development which supports the development of new concepts for the next generation of research infrastructures of the European interest.
The European Union’s HORIZON EUROPE Research and Innovation programme funded the project under grant agreement No. 101188210.