The JERICO-S3 project aims at strengthening the European network of coastal observatories via developing a powerful and structured European Research Infrastructure dedicated to observe and monitor the complex marine coastal seas. It does this e.g. by supporting excellence in marine coastal research to better answer societal and policy needs.
Citizen science initiatives are more and more common, and also in the coastal marine area there are at national/regional levels some interesting concepts. Integrating Citizen science data, and connecting to the initiatives, fits in the main objectives of JERICO-S3 when it comes to innovative monitoring strategies and involvement of the citizen (communities) as stakeholder to the JERICO-RI.
Currently the “low-cost” (or better: “cost-efficient”) technology movement has taken off. Cost-efficient technology for marine observation is technology, sometimes simple, sometimes technologically advanced, offered at a lot low pricing then traditional monitoring equipments. Cost-efficient technology makes use of basic components (like small sensors, chips, bandwidth) being available at affordables prices and allowing observations at a very good accuracy. This led to a change of focus of this WP6 action on citizen science, namely to: Explore the available cost-efficient technology and how that can be used for coastal monitoring, by scientists, but also the citizen.
The lower-cost concepts available on the market are actually a way to empower citizen scientists, because in this way valuable coastal observation becomes available to all. Citizen scientists have always run into skepticism among policy makers and scientists when it came to data quality, but using the right cost-efficient technology actually overcomes that barrier.
JERICO organised a dedicated cost-efficient technology workshop, in September 2023 in Brest in which interested colleagues from the JERICO network were brought together with some developers of and experts in cost-efficient technology. During the meeting concepts were presented, the potential and barriers for wide roll-out and integration of cost-efficient sensors looking 1/5/10 years ahead were discussed. This has contributed to the strategy forward for the coastal science community, and JERICO community specifically, e.g. in projects like HE LandSeaLot where the work can continue work on next steps.