How to evaluate the impact of citizen-science projects: The case of urban green projects in Suriname

N. Schwarz, Davita Obergh, Rudi van Kanten, Randy van Bree, Robert Ouko Ohuru, L. Willemen

Research output: Book/ReportReportAcademic

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Abstract

“What did we contribute with our citizen science monitoring and how can we evaluate this?” is the question the project team of the Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation Faculty at University of Twente and Tropenbos Suriname are tackling in this report. The team conducted two projects on the role and use of urban green spaces in the Greater Paramaribo area, Suriname, from 2019 to 2022. One core activity was to set up citizen science-based monitoring of urban green space use and climate data in various locations across the city region.

To scope different impact assessment approaches, this report summarises existing reviews on how to evaluate the impact of citizen science projects and related works and summarises key approaches on When and Why evaluate?, Who is evaluating?, What to evaluate?, How to evaluate? and How to communicate the findings?

Then, the report applies our findings from the literature review as a framework to evaluate the citizen science part of the urban green projects in Paramaribo.

We then report our findings on evaluating the experience of the citizen scientists, a science products inventory and educational materials we developed, a usability and usefulness analysis of the dashboard visualising the collected data and impact stories on how awareness among stakeholders might have changed.

We reflected on our evaluation in two ways. First: What did we learn for future projects and creating actionable knowledge? We summarised these reflections with respect to interaction, sharing, geo-technology and viability and continuity. Second: What did we learn about evaluating a citizen science project?
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationEnschede
PublisherUniversity of Twente
Number of pages55
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Jul 2024

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