Presented by Dr Andreas Matheus, June 1st 2016 at the 10th GEO European Projects Workshop. This was part of the session 'Citizens' Observatories for environmental policy monitoring and development'.

1. COBWEB
In Pursuit of Conclusions
Dr. Andreas Matheus
andreas.matheus@secure-dimensions.de
01June 2016

2. In the beginning…
• … there was stakeholder engagement
• … and we tried to understand where can
COBWEB actually contribute towards
improving/influencing environmental policy
making (even though we had a pretty clear
idea what that might be)
• … we designed and built an architecture
that would help to produce answers
• … we did co-design

3. The technical aspects – COBWEB “core” is Open Source
• Survey Designer (Web Browser GUI)
• COBWEB App to run surveys:
• public: Anyone can participate
• login & participate: Basically anyone on the
Internet (Gmail, Facebook, COBWEB)
• on invitation: The Survey Manager selects
(known) users
• COBWEB Middleware Services
• QA, Viewer and Standards based output

4. The technical aspects – Security & Privacy
• Ensure privacy for collaborating users
• compliance with 95/46/EC
• Ensure wellbeing of creatures
• survey results can be sensitive, e.g.
endangered species, time & location
• Supporting users with social media login
• Supporting the different survey types

5. The technical aspects – Conclusion
• Use of Open Standards where possible
and applicable to ensure interoperability
• OGC, OASIS, W3C, IETF
• COBWEB is a distributed architecture with
different Technology Readiness Levels
• COBWEB is a Research Project
• COBWEB “core” and security is high TRL
• Question (for later): Do you know any
solution that does what COBWEB does?

6. In pursuit of conclusions - Part 1
• Applied the architecture to involve citizens
and professionals making observations
• public: Japanese Knotweed (Wales)
• login & participate: Dolphins (Wales)
• on invitation: Dog waste bag* (Germany)
• Could publish into GEOSS
• But so far results are considered test data
• GEOSS does not support data sharing for
protected data
*: Producing real data but restricted access

7. In pursuit of conclusions – Part 2
• Do we have answers to the daring question
“Are we improving/influencing…?”
• First result (draft): Invasive Species / JKW
• “COBWEB has successfully demonstrated
involving citizens collecting evidence of
Invasive Species
• rapid turnaround between volunteers and
• standards based provisioning of results to policy
making bodies (Welsh Government)”
[Welsh Government]

8. In pursuit of conclusions – Part 3
• Uptake, or what remains as future work
• COBWEB activity in developing a data
model to publish results (observations)
• OGC Sensor Web Enablement
• OGC Observations and Measurements
• W3C Semantics
• Acronym: SWE4CS
• Leading partner OGC Europe
• Dr. Ingo Simonis talk coming up shortly

9. In pursuit of conclusions – COBWEB has delivered
• Developed methods of how to apply Citizen
Science across Europe
• Involvement with feet on the ground (Co-
design, GEOSS, GEPW, OGC, etc.)
• A high TRL system to practise with
• Collected data in different formats via
standards based interfaces
• Implications for policy making (early draft
results) – more to come…

10. Pursuit of conclusions – COBWEB dissemination
• COBWEB past events
• GEO-IX, GEO-X, GEO-XI, GEO-XII
• GEPW and INSPIRE events
• COBWEB most recent event
• JRC and ECSA events
• OGC Technical Committee meetings
• Citizen Science: Nottingham, Sydney, D.C.
• OGC TC Meeting in Dublin next June
• COBWEB summit on 21st June - Open to YOU!

11. Thank you for paying attention!
It is important,
not to stop being innovative...
Secure Dimensions GmbH
Holistic Geosecurity
Dr. Andreas Matheus
Waxensteinstr. 28
D-81377 München, Germany
Email am@secure-dimensions.de
Web www.secure-dimensions.de