ACSA ACT & Region Presents: WeObserve co-design approach to Communities of Practice with Uta Wehn
Channel: Australian Citizen Science Association
Date: 2021-06-15

ACSA ACT & Region Presents: Consolidating and sharing knowledge among citizen science practitioners: the WeObserve co-design approach to Communities of Practice


Along with the rapid increase of citizen science initiatives around the world, the number of citizen science practitioners is also growing. Practice-based knowledge on how to address the challenges that citizen science initiatives are facing is advancing. Yet this knowledge and experience are often dispersed among various stakeholders in academia, the private and public sectors, and civil society. In order to consolidate and share this dispersed knowledge, the WeObserve project co-designed Communities of Practice (CoP) to serve as the vehicle for sharing information and creating new knowledge on selected key thematic topics related to citizen science.
This presentation will outline the WeObserve approach to co-designing Communities of Practice and feature the activities and outputs of the WeObserve CoPs. Lessons learned will reflect on how to ensure that CoP members derive value from the joint learning and outputs created by the CoPs.

Uta Wehn is Associate Professor of Water Innovation Studies and Head of the Knowledge & Innovation Studies group at IHE Delft. She is a social scientist with a background in ICTs, drawing on more than 20 years of industrial, research, and international development experience. Her work at the intersection of data and knowledge co-creation, digital innovations, and water and environment focuses on the social dynamics of innovation and how to harness Citizen Science and social innovation for participatory environmental governance and sustainable development. Her Citizen Science and community-based monitoring activities include case studies in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, tailoring user-centered and multi-stakeholder co-design approaches and advancing methods for measuring as well as sustainably attaining impacts. She is a member of several high-level international initiatives, incl. the OECD Water Governance Initiative where she has represented IHE Delft since the start of the initiative in 2013. She currently chairs two WeObserve Communities of Practice and co-chairs the CSGP Community of Practice on Citizen Science & Open Science.