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Short Abstract

Drawing on a systematic map of empirical studies, we examine how collaborative and co-created citizen science (CS) contributes to environmental risk assessment and management. Co-created CS appears to deliver community benefits more often and in more diverse ways.

Abstract

In an era of systemic risks from natural and human-induced hazards, we need approaches that address such risks at different governance levels, including those at the community level. Citizen science (CS) – public participation in research – is one such approach that has the potential to benefit risk assessment and management. Building on systematic evidence synthesis methodologies, we examined the individual and collective benefits from CS to environmental risk assessment and management. From systematic search results (9277 records, WoS and Scopus), we found 133 publications dealing with the topic in-depth.

In this submission, we focus on the subsample of collaborative (n=38) and co-created CS (n=28 papers), by outlining their contributions to citizens and communities, as well as to risk management. Results indicate that co-created (and sometimes collaborative CS) typically had fewer individual outcomes reported, but increasingly more varied types of community outcomes than contributory CS. From individual outcomes, behavioural outcomes are slightly more represented in the co-created CS section, whereas scientific skills’ outcome appear more in the collaborative CS subsample. Co-created CS articles report community outcomes more frequently than contributory or collaborative CS.