An Open Data and Citizen Science Approach to Building Resilience to Natural Hazards in a Data-Scarce Remote Mountainous Part of Nepal

Children in All Policies (CAP) 2030 Citizen Science for Climate Change Resilience: a cross-sectional pilot study engaging adolescents to study climate hazards, biodiversity and nutrition in rural Nepal

Background

Young people will suffer most from climate change yet are rarely engaged in dialogue about it. Citizen science offers a method for collecting policy-relevant data, whilst promoting awareness and capacity building. We tested the feasibility and acceptability of engaging Nepalese adolescents in climate change and health-related citizen science.

Methods

We purposively selected 33 adolescents from two secondary schools in one remote and one relatively accessible district of Nepal. We contextualised existing apps and developed bespoke apps to survey climate hazards, waste and water management, local biodiversity, nutrition and sociodemographic information. We analysed and presented quantitative data using a descriptive analysis. We captured perceptions and learnings via focus group discussions and analysed qualitative data using thematic analysis. We shared findings with data collectors using tables, graphs, data dashboards and maps.

Results

Adolescents collected 1667 biodiversity observations, identified 72 climate-change related hazards, and mapped 644 geolocations. They recorded 286 weights, 248 heights and 340 dietary recalls. Adolescents enjoyed learning how to collect the data and interpret the findings and gained an appreciation of local biodiversity which engendered 'environmental stewardship'. Data highlighted the prevalence of failing crops and landslides, revealed both under- and over-nutrition and demonstrated that children consume more junk foods than adults. Adolescents learnt about the impacts of climate change and the importance of eating a diverse diet of locally grown foods. A lack of a pre-established sampling frame, multiple records of the same observation and spurious nutrition data entries by unsupervised adolescents limited data quality and utility. Lack of internet access severely impacted feasibility, especially of apps which provide online feedback.

Conclusions

Citizen science was largely acceptable, educational and empowering for adolescents, although not always feasible without internet access. Future projects could improve data quality and integrate youth leadership training to enable climate-change advocacy with local leaders.

Open and Crowd-Based Platforms: Impact on Organizational and Market Performance

The aim of the research was to present the state of the art on the use of open and crowd-based platforms and the advantages in terms of business performance that emerging practices employing such technologies are able to provide. The analysis was performed by extracting information on emerging practices from the repository Business Process Framework for Emerging Technologies developed by the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Salerno (Italy). Contingency tables allowed analysis of the association of such practices with industry, business function, business process, and impact on performance. From the analysis of the results, many implementation opportunities emerge, mainly in manufacturing, healthcare, and transportation industries, providing benefits not only in terms of efficiency and productivity, cost reduction, and information management but also in product/service differentiation. Therefore, the research provides an overview of opportunities for organizations employing open and crowd-based platforms in order to improve market and organizational performance. Moreover, the article highlights in what specific business contexts these technologies can be mainly useful.