Empowering Nationwide Public Participation for Restoration Assessment in Indonesia
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RESTORE+ launched a national campaign to identify landscape restoration potential by using the tailormade crowdsourcing platform Urundata built by the project consortium. Urundata allows communities to be involved in efforts to restore forests and landscapes through mobile applications and thus contribute to scientific assessments supporting policy making efforts.
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On 26 November 2019, RESTORE+ launched a nationwide crowdsourcing campaign to collect data to inform forest and landscape restoration targets and strategies in Indonesia. More than 150 representatives from national and sub-national government offices, civil society organizations and universities throughout the country participated in the event to disseminate the campaign and discuss engagement modes that will maximize public participation through their respective institutions.
This campaign is the third – but first nationwide – campaign after a series of pilot crowdsourcing activities in the provinces of East Kalimantan and South Sumatra taking place throughout 2019. The first campaign was launched in April, and focused on land cover classification, followed by a second campaign in August which aimed at identifying land cover changes throughout both provinces. Until now, more than 600 active contributors and 14 universities participated in the activities which resulted in more than 2 million interpretations of satellite imagery. With the launching of the nationwide campaign, 17 new universities from other provinces joined in the activities.
During the event, first results of these pilot data collection campaigns were presented. As Ping Yowargana, IIASA researcher and science to policy coordinator of RESTORE+ explained, the conventional process of interpreting satellite imagery generally involves a limited number of experts, making it a time consuming and costly process. The first two campaigns, however, showed that the quality of interpretations by the public has the potential to reach the interpretations of experts. In addition, the first experiences revealed enthusiasm and high potential for future contributions to complement simplified scientific analyses, which are made more interesting through gamification.
This official start of the national campaign will now be followed by a series activities, which will be taken up in a more intensive social media campaign starting in December 2019 until March 2020. During this period, social media posts and other activities regularly report on closely monitored user participation.
More:
This campaign is the third – but first nationwide – campaign after a series of pilot crowdsourcing activities in the provinces of East Kalimantan and South Sumatra taking place throughout 2019. The first campaign was launched in April, and focused on land cover classification, followed by a second campaign in August which aimed at identifying land cover changes throughout both provinces. Until now, more than 600 active contributors and 14 universities participated in the activities which resulted in more than 2 million interpretations of satellite imagery. With the launching of the nationwide campaign, 17 new universities from other provinces joined in the activities.
During the event, first results of these pilot data collection campaigns were presented. As Ping Yowargana, IIASA researcher and science to policy coordinator of RESTORE+ explained, the conventional process of interpreting satellite imagery generally involves a limited number of experts, making it a time consuming and costly process. The first two campaigns, however, showed that the quality of interpretations by the public has the potential to reach the interpretations of experts. In addition, the first experiences revealed enthusiasm and high potential for future contributions to complement simplified scientific analyses, which are made more interesting through gamification.
This official start of the national campaign will now be followed by a series activities, which will be taken up in a more intensive social media campaign starting in December 2019 until March 2020. During this period, social media posts and other activities regularly report on closely monitored user participation.
More:
- The Forest Scribe: Urundata: Collecting Environment Data the Fun Way, 9 March 2020
- The Forest Scribe: Urundata: Cara Mengumpul Data Lingkungan Yang Mudah dan Menyenangkan, 9 March 2020
- Reuters: Gotta catch 'em all: Pokemon-style app aims to save Indonesia's forests, 7 February, 2020
- The Jakarta Post: App seeks to crowdsource data on land use change, damaged forests, 5 February 2020
- The Jakarta Post: South Sumatran millennials encouraged to help forest, land restoration via app, 3 February 2020
- Katadata: Aplikasi Urundata Ajak Warga Berbagi Data untuk Pemetaan Lingkungan, 27 November 2019
- Tirto: RESTORE+ Ajak Masyarakat Pulihkan Hutan Lewat Aplikasi Urundata, 26 November 2019
- Antranews: Aplikasi Urundata Ajak Warga Berbagi Data untuk Pemetaan Lingkungan, 26 November 2019
- Antranews: Peneliti: Pemulihan lingkungan perlu variasi perspektif, 26 November 2019
- Antranews: Peneliti: Restorasi lingkungan harus disertai pencarian akar masalah, 26 November 2019
- IIASA: Crowdsourcing landscape restoration assessment in Indonesia, 26 November 2019
