Cos4Bio – Cos4Env

Cos4Bio: A service that integrates biodiversity observations from multiple citizen observatories in one place: save time in the species identification process and get access to an enormous number of observations. 
Cos4Env: A service that integrates environmental data from multiple citizen observatories in one place: save time in environmental data validation and get access to an enormous quantity of data. 

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Service description:

Cos4Bio and Cos4Env services are two online platforms that integrate observations on biodiversity (Cos4Bio) or environmental (Cos4Env) monitoring from different citizen observatories, potentially an enormous number of observations that are of interest to the expert community. 

Development & functioning :

The portal will allow citizen science experts to view and identify all observations in one place. Once identified, the observation returns to the citizen observatory portal where it was reported, where according to their particular algorithm, the observation is finally validated. For example, if a citizen science expert identifies a species through the portal, and this image comes from Natusfera, it automatically will activate a notification service to inform Natusfera about the identification. However, the citizen observatory will do the final validation according to its particular algorithm. For example, some algorithms need a certain degree of expertise to validate the species’ name, but other algorithms require many identifications of the same observation to validate it, etc.

Additionally, on the expert platform, users will be able to search observations from other citizen observatories like ArtPortalent, iSpot, Natusfera and PlantNet with the main goal of identifying and downloading them for their research. 

Example: If you are a scientist and want to carry out a study on the distribution of x organisms in your country, you could download all the organism observations from the portal without worrying about the citizen science observatory or the country they come from. Just as simple as that, you get a lot of data from a huge area of coverage. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) – based automatic-validation tools, will also play an important role. This will help the citizen-science experts who validate the observations on the experts’ portals identify the observation.  

So, the experts’ portal will take advantage of artificial intelligence. At the same time, the artificial intelligence will improve, as the more information it has, the more it can learn. Like ArtPortalent, iSpot, Natusfera, and PlantNet with the main goal to identify and download them for their researches.


Innovation for citizen observatories:

  • Reduce the time that citizen science experts spend on the identification process and therefore on citizens observatories.
  • Allow users to download observations from one portal without forgetting that the platform will recognize and notify each observation’s authorship.
  • Train much better algorithms than if we have separate databases with only the partial information of a single citizen observatory.
Currently there aren’t any similar services, such as an aggregate citizen observation system that allows experts to spend less time searching, identifying and researching





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Co-design highlights

People involved

Most of the attendees who answered the post-event survey would recommend the co-design session to a friend.


All the attendees who answered the post-event survey found ‘Miro’ tool very easy to use. 

Want to join the co-design community?

Interact and meet other professionals working in your field

You will be able to do networking with other professionals and projects.

Help boost citizen observatories' functionalities

For example, improve the artificial intelligence species identification, the data integration from various citizen science platforms, etc.

Be an active part of the open science movement

Cos4Cloud's technical services are open source and are intended to be adapted and improved by the interested community.

Learn about citizen science, technology, and co-design

Also, we will inform you about how we have applied the co-design feedback to the service development at the end of the project.

Let's co-create and test Cos4Bio/Env!