Disaster, Infrastructure and Participatory Knowledge: The Planetary Response Network

Abstract

There are many challenges involved in online participatory humanitarian response. We evaluate the Planetary Response Network (PRN), a collaboration between researchers, humanitarian organizations, and the online citizen science platform Zooniverse. The PRN uses satellite and aerial image analysis to provide stakeholders with high-level situational awareness during and after humanitarian crises. During past deployments, thousands of online volunteers have compared pre-and post-event satellite images to identify damage to infrastructure and buildings, access blockages, and signs of people in distress. In addition to collectively producing aggregated "heat maps" of features that are shared with responders and decision makers, individual volunteers may also flag novel features directly using integrated community discussion software. The online infrastructure facilitates worldwide participation even for geographically focused disasters; this widespread public participation means that high-value information can be delivered rapidly and uniformly even for large-scale crises. We discuss lessons learned from deployments, place the PRN's distributed online approach in the context of more localized efforts, and identify future needs for the PRN and similar online crisis-mapping projects. The successes of the PRN demonstrate that effective online crisis mapping is possible on a generalized citizen science platform such as the Zooniverse.

The societal impact of Open Science: a scoping review

“…but also to physical health (fitness, food and gardening, chronic disease prevention, etc.). The largest number of papers (9) illustrate positive impacts of the CS programme/project itself on the health and safety of participants and their communities [ 27 , 124 , 136 , 144 , 155 , 173 , 177 , 181 , 187 ]. Evidence also shows that CS participation leads to changes in behaviour that benefit health [ 60 , 62 , 78 , 129 , 188 ], including using project-generated air quality data to determine when to engage in outdoor activity [ 123 ] or choosing to cycle or walk rather than drive to improve air quality [ 155 ].…”

“…conservation monitoring in remote and/or dangerous locations), while Simmons et al . [ 187 ] documented a risk of burnout and ‘secondary trauma’ to participants in an online crowd crisis-mapping project that was used to provide real-time emergency response in the aftermath of a disaster.…”

“…In a review paper, Walker et al [27] reported evidence that participation in some CS activities poses health and safety risks to participants (e.g. conservation monitoring in remote and/or dangerous locations), while Simmons et al [187] documented a risk of burnout and 'secondary trauma' to participants in an online crowd crisismapping project that was used to provide real-time emergency response in the aftermath of a disaster.…”

The societal impact of Open Science–a scoping review

“…but also to physical health (fitness, food and gardening, chronic disease prevention, etc.). The largest number of papers ( 9) illustrate positive impacts of the CS program/project itself on the health and safety of participants and their communities (23,123,133,141,154,163,164,178,184). Evidence also shows that CS participation leads to changes in behaviour that benefit health (69,71,84,126,185), including using project-generated air quality data to determine when to engage in outdoor activity (122) (Mahajan et al, 2021) or choosing to cycle or walk rather than drive to improve air quality (154).…”