Topic 5d - Big Data, Crowd Sourcing and Citizen Science
A massive amount of data is collected every day by the numerous remote sensing satellites currently operating around the Earth, and once the new European Sentinel series of operational EO satellites is fully launched and working, this is set to increase still further. It is estimated that ESA’s Sentinel satellites will deliver around 10 Tb of new data every day, with a total of around 20,000 Tb by 2020. Massive and extremely fast computer systems are required to deal with such data volumes, and much of the Sentinel data will need to be processed almost as soon as it is collected, since it is to be used for operational applications and the generation of ‘real time’ information within Europe’s Copernicus Programme.
Certain, less time-sensitive applications may, however, benefit from inputs from the public when it comes to analysing, and sometimes validating, the EO data. ‘Crowd sourcing’ and ‘citizen science’ initiatives have provided an extremely useful way in which to engage ‘non-professionals’ (e.g. students or members of the public) to participate in important scientific analyses, for example in the case of www.galaxyzoo.org and setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu, with additional knock-on benefits in education and public engagement. These techniques are likely to prove very beneficial to the handling of certain types of Earth observation datasets in the future.
In this video, Professor Chris Lintott explains the importance of citizen science initiatives and introduces Zooniverse’s ‘Floating Forests’ - a project which aims to engage thousands in the analysis of Earth observation data. Dr Angela Benedetti also demonstrates the scale of the computer processing power required for weather forecasting and developing models to support accurate predictions.
Featured Educators:
- Professor Alan O’Neill
- Professor Chris Lintott
- Dr Angela Benedetti
View featured satellites on the satellite tracking app
Don’t forget you can download the video, transcript and take any quizzes available with the links on the right.
