Iliad researchers highlight unrealised opportunities for citizen science in digital twins

The full potential of citizen science in the context of digital twins has yet to be fully realised, argued 21 researchers from the EU-funded ILIAD project for Digital Twins of the Ocean (DTOs) in a paper titled “The Iliad digital twins of the ocean: opportunities for citizen science”, published in the proceedings of the 5th conference of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA), held in Vienna in April 2024.

The Iliad team is working on over 20 separate DTOs falling into two primary categories: (i) environmental and ecological digital twins, and (ii) engineering and industrial digital twins. 

Preliminary results of interviews conducted among project leaders of the Iliad DTOs indicate significant opportunities for applying citizen science in the DTOs. These opportunities include: (1) promoting existing (or establishing new) citizen science standards to enable data to be more easily integrated into models; (2) including citizens in discussions around contentious marine management decisions such as pollution or wind-energy; and (3) engaging professionals such as fishers or energy technicians as citizen scientists, not just members of the public. 

“Importantly, the value of citizen science is recognised to extend beyond just the provision of data” the researchers noted. “Incorporating citizen science into the development of digital twins has the potential to: increase public engagement and involvement in the topic of the digital twin; increase public awareness and education (including enhancing ocean and water literacy); increase public participation in decision making; and increase the societal relevance of the digital twins developed,” they explained. 

The researchers illustrated this using citizen science elements of four Iliad DTOs as examples:

1. Jellyfish swarm forecast, Israel. Citizen science observations from the Meduzot project are combined with metocean parameters to develop an interactive forecasting tool for jellyfish swarms. 
2. Harbour safety, Varna Bay, Bulgaria. A new citizen science app “I SEE SEA” has been developed to enable citizens to report coastal pollution, jellyfish swarms, weather changes and other unusual phenomena, which are fed into a digital twin of Varna Bay used by vessels within Varna Port.
3. Oil spill monitoring, Thracian Sea, Greece. Citizen observations (extracted from social media) are used to provide early warnings of potential oil pollution and are used to trigger and validate oil spill models. 
4. Cultural heritage monitoring, Israel. An ongoing citizen science project engages interested parties and actors, including students, to report archaeological finds along the Israeli coast and integrate them within an interactive digital record. 

“Citizen science and engagement play a pivotal role in the project”, the Iliad researchers said, citing its contribution towards exploring the potential for citizen science to contribute to digital twins of the oceans, and demonstrating how citizen scientists (and society more broadly) can benefit from digital twins. 

Iliad’s pilot digital twins can provide a number of lessons learned for the integration of citizen science in digital twins across a range of marine topics and for environmental digital twins more broadly, particularly related to the availability and interoperability of citizen science data, the researchers said. In this context, the Iliad project is developing an Ocean Information Model (OIM) as a tool to provide full semantic interoperability within digital twins of the ocean.

Additionally, the Iliad project has established a citizen science community within the UNESCO IOC Ocean Best Practices Repository, to support further capacity-strengthening for citizen science within the marine sector. The community will also provide a collection of marine-specific citizen-science best practices, manuals, guides, handbooks and other documents that ultimately can be adopted by marine researchers – including those interested in developing a DTO – across Europe and beyond.