SocioCoast: Design and Implementation of a Data-Driven Platform for Citizen Science in Coastal Areas

Abstract

Due to the rapid urbanization and globalization that has occurred in recent decades, cities have undergone significant changes and transformations. The smart city concept can lead to improvements in the life quality of citizens and contribute to the city’s sustainability by collecting humans’ real-time observations. More specifically in smart coastal areas, citizen’s science data can be utilized not only to increase the effectiveness of its services like smart tourism and smart transit but also to raise awareness about environmental issues. Emphasizing on coastal areas under the Blue Flag program and the Natura 2000 network, in this work, we introduce a system that aims to collect crowdsourcing data from citizens and tourists and combine or compare them with existing knowledge for these areas. We describe the design and implementation: the back-end, its data sources and also the front-end outputs, a web knowledge platform, and a crowdsourcing mobile application. Geospatial information as well as historical or real-time data collected will be provided to users for further exploitation and creation of their own applications. A demonstration of the system is also provided to showcase its usefulness in increasing attractiveness and raising awareness for coastal areas by offering users rich and updated information.