How the EPA is Generating Grassroots Support for its Mission

Less than a month after the 2016 elections, a lame duck session of Congress passed the bipartisan Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing Act of 2016, granting federal agencies explicit authority to advance their missions in partnership with individuals, private and nonprofit entities, and foreign governments through crowdsourcing and citizen science. Citizen science, defined by the legislation as “a form of open collaboration in which individuals or organizations participate voluntarily in the scientific process” can include research, data collection, analysis, design, and development tasks. Support for the act was driven in part by a September 2015 policy memo, “Addressing Societal and Scientific Challenges to Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing,” written by President Barack Obama’s science advisor, Dr. John Holdren. In this memo, Dr. Holdren articulated the principles that federal agencies should use in citizen science and crowdsourcing projects, directing agencies to take specific actions to advance the applications of citizen science and explore how the practice could assist in the missions of all federal agencies. In the two years since the Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing Act passed, agencies have done exactly that.

As recently as March 2018, NASA has employed citizen projects to report on local landslides and identify kelp forests in space imagery stills. Last fall, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began applying citizen scientists to identify sea lions in Alaska. This summer, CPR had the opportunity to discuss citizen science efforts in depth with Jay Benforado, the Chief Innovation Officer in the EPA Office of Research and Development. Benforado’s innovation team is charged with exploring new science- and technology-based approaches to how the EPA addresses environmental problems, including testing new ideas and convening stakeholders to discuss and disseminate them.  Arguably more challenged than any other federal agency under the current administration, the EPA has faced hiring freezes and retirement buyouts, leadership changes, budget cuts, and significant changes to its strategic goals. Benforado shared how his innovation work is helping EPA adapt and thrive in this new climate by driving the democratization of environmental protection, while also helping individuals and communities better engage in local environmental solutions.

 

Thanks for agreeing to speak with us, Jay. To start, in your opinion, what new programs or policies has your team recently implemented to extreme success?

I’m personally very excited about our work here at EPA and with partners on citizen science and crowdsourcing. Three years ago, the EPA Administrator charged a federal advisory committee to review EPA’s citizen science work, and they produced two reports, one in 2016 and one in 2018 that encourage EPA to build capacity to use citizen science in EPA environmental programs and policies. We feel that technology—low-cost sensors and smartphones, internet connectivity—create huge opportunities for deploying citizen science as part of environmental protection in the U.S. and abroad. EPA has started a number of projects that advance those ideas. One of the key attributes of our work is working in partnership with communities, with academic institutions, with state, tribal, and local governments, as well as the private sector.

Got it. You’re also a co-chair for the Federal Community of Practice on Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science, correct? How has that community evolved since you’ve been in leadership?

Guilty as charged. I co-chair the Federal Community of Practice on Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science with a colleague from the US Geological Survey. Over the last five years, we’ve grown to include about 60 federal agencies that are interested in citizen science. And these include many that are linked to the environment: Health and Human Services, US Geological Survey, National Science Foundation, NOAA, NASA, etc. This group meets monthly, we have a listserv, and we do a lot of learning together. Three years ago in September 2015, a group of about 100 members across 25 agencies put together the content for a new website, citizenscience.gov, which is designed to help federal employees understand how to use citizen science in their work. It includes a toolkit, some case study examples, a catalogue of projects across federal agencies, and we’re very proud of that new website. Around the same time, [projects from agency members of] this network, or community of practice, caught the attention of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, culminating in a policy directive by Dr. Holdren. That, as well as recent congressional legislation—the Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing Act of 2016—has really put wind in our sails across all federal agencies for using citizen science to accomplish specific aspects of each agency’s mission.

Could you talk a little bit about some of EPA’s specific citizen science initiatives, and who exactly these citizen scientists are? Does EPA look for a certain skill set, or can anyone with a smartphone get involved?

Let me give two examples of citizen science work that EPA is either leading or involved with. The first involves harmful algal blooms (often called HABs), which is an issue of importance to many communities due to how they affect recreational activities such as swimming, boating, etc., and other harmful side effects. EPA, in partnership with several other organizations helped launch a program called the Cyanobacteria Monitoring Collaborative, which has three coordinated monitoring projects, one of which is a citizen science program where ordinary people with no scientific training collect water samples. They use a low-cost microscope connected to a smartphone to send photographs to scientists to help monitor the locations of these toxic algae in both time and space. This sort of program is a novel and cost-effective way to get accurate, more local information about algae. Involving the public, people who care about their drinking water and where their kids swim, is an ideal way to better understand this problem and get some advanced warning about where the blooms are really causing problems. It is an effective way to involve people in problem-solving at the local level.

A second example focuses on the transformational potential of low-cost environmental sensors. In the last 10 years, there have been major technological changes in air monitoring. Today, you can buy fairly inexpensive air sensors and collect air pollution information that’s very localized that could supplement government datasets. Three or four years ago, EPA created the Air Sensors Toolbox, an online resource, that provides information to the public about sensor capabilities, including how to design air monitoring projects and how to interpret data from low-cost sensors. This toolbox has proven to be an invaluable resource for the public, and will help expand the availability of information on air quality across different communities.

Thanks, Jay. On a similar note, in this interview and in recent interviews, you’ve alluded to a priority on involving the everyday public as well as the private sector in environmental problem-solving. Is this a newer priority, and if so, what is prompting that change?

Great question. Our vision for citizen science is that we engage all parts of society by providing people with knowledge and/ or technology giving them the ability to participate. This means different kinds of communities: rural, suburban, urban, and different kinds of people: all kinds of demographics from age, youth to retired people. Some citizen science is about environmental justice communities, others are about particular places people care about, the places they swim, etc. So with that in mind, most of our citizen science efforts are very broad in terms of who can participate, including some projects more targeted to youth that have an education component.

Some citizen science programs are designed by scientists to encourage citizen participation. At the other end of the spectrum, community-driven and community-organized projects tap into local citizen participation.  An EPA external advisory committee recently recommended that we continue to expand our efforts to support community-driven citizen science. These are projects where a particular community has a concern and wants to collect more information about their drinking water, air quality, or other issues. For example, EPA recently awarded $2 million to a consortium led by Virginia Tech, which includes North Carolina State University, University of Iowa, and Louisiana State University, on citizen science approaches to manage lead in drinking water. This project will develop tools and approaches that homeowners can use to understand lead in their houses and communities, and strategies for mitigating those risks.

I’m very excited about opportunities to advance citizen science. It makes people more aware of environmental issues, gets more granular information about a particular environmental issue in the community at the household or neighborhood level, and leads to more collaborative problem solving where the public, government, and other institutions work together to solve priority environmental and public health issues. For EPA funded or managed projects, to mitigate risks and protect project volunteers, we build in privacy safeguards to each program to protect personally identifiable information. We’re careful in designing citizen science programs to only include information that doesn’t violate privacy laws or privacy concerns.

Hand-in-hand with protecting its citizen scientists, how does the EPA maintain quality of work done by others? How was the Quality Assurance Project Plan developed, and how is the EPA making sure it is enforced across citizen scientists?

Sure. For the record, the word “enforce” isn’t really the way we’re approaching quality assurance (QA). We do require QA for any project that EPA funds, but what we’re going to be doing is providing QA guidance and best practices to help any citizen science project succeed. The word “enforce” isn’t quite the tone that we’re using for our QA plan for projects that EPA doesn’t fund.

One of the first issues raised when people learn about citizen science is usually some skepticism about data quality. Up in New England in June 2016, our regional office organized a citizen science conference with over 100 people, and one of the key requests for the agency was to provide guidance and assistance on quality assurance. We’ve put together a draft quality assurance handbook for citizen science that provides a framework for a variety of projects to prepare quality assurance plans: simple projects more oriented to community awareness and education, research projects, and projects that are meant to inform regulation or policy—there’s a hierarchy of escalating quality assurance for different kinds of projects, both beginning level citizen science projects as well as more mature programs.

This handbook is in the final stages of preparation. We’ve had extensive review by states and tribes, citizen science experts, and our quality assurance experts here at EPA on the handbook’s guidelines for documenting appropriate QA procedures. Next year, we’re planning additional outreach to state and local governments, NGOs, and others on applying the templates for quality assurance. We’re very excited about this new handbook and look forward to working with our partners on the data quality issue.

Is that your next big priority in terms of EPA communications and outreach?

EPA’s Office of the Inspector General just released a report in September 2018 that identified four priorities for better institutionalizing citizen science in EPA’s programs and regions. The first is a more comprehensive strategy and vision that articulates an EPA-wide strategy for how citizen science can be used in future environmental protection. Second, the OIG identified improvements in data management and data platforms as an area that needs increased investment and attention. Third, the quality assurance issue that we’ve already talked about and the issuance of the QA handbook along with training and outreach. Last, the report encourages the agency to increase communication and capacity building to EPA staff about how, where, and when to use citizen science, as well as assistance to external partners on how citizen science can contribute to environmental projects. Those four areas will definitely be a focus for EPA over the next year or two.

Now I’m curious about where technological innovation fits into that plan. How is the EPA promoting technology-based solutions to pressing environmental issues right now?

Technology innovation has always been an important way to increase environmental protection. Continual technology innovation can lower the costs of environmental protection and increase the performance or impact of technology on our mission. Today, some technology innovation activities take place in EPA research labs, and many other efforts happen in partner organizations. We run a Small Business Innovation Research program that provides funding through contracts for small companies, and EPA’s research labs often use cooperative arrangements to demonstrate and improve technology that’s been designed externally. EPA partners with entrepreneurs that have new technology, and we help with testing and validation of technology.

To highlight one example, in 2016 EPA awarded grants to six research organizations to work with local communities on low-cost air pollution sensor technology. This was part of a set of research grants in our Science to Achieve Results program. I’m excited about how these projects will address real-world issues about sensor technology, potentially answering questions on how accurate and reliable these new low-cost sensor technologies are when used by the public, the quality of the data that the sensors can produce, how the sensors can be used by communities and individuals, and what kinds of information help communities and individuals understand and reduce their exposure to harmful air pollution. It’s vital that we as a country work to continue technology innovation as it relates to pollution.

Would you say that partners such as the research organizations you mentioned drive a lot of the innovation portion of EPA’s work right now? What is the EPA looking for as it assesses its future needs for new hires internally?

EPA’s programs, defined by statutes, are quite encompassing of a range of environmental problems from water, to air, land, and chemicals. EPA administers directly or works with other organizations on a wide range of environmental problems. The kinds of people that we hire include scientists and engineers, policy experts, community engagement specialists, as well as administrative functions needed to run a large organization. Roles range from being a site manager at a Superfund site, to developing regulations and policies, to conducting research in one of EPA’s research laboratories on priority issues. I’m excited about the next generation of environmental experts that may be in school today, but will be in the job market in the near future. EPA is one of many places to apply those skills. Other organizations at the state, local, and tribal area, NGOs, academia, and the private sector also play their role in the Nation’s system of environmental protection.

Beyond citizen science projects, how else is EPA engaging the public in its work? For example, agencies such as NASA and universities like the University of Washington have had success with gamifying projects for additional manpower. Similarly, the US Department of Health and Human Services’ use of challenges and prizes such as the KidneyX program has garnered a good deal of attention. Is EPA utilizing gamification, or challenges and prizes at this time?

EPA has been active in exploring how to use challenges and prizes to tap creative solutions from people outside the agency in the U.S. and abroad. To date, EPA has sponsored more than 30 prize competitions. Topics from the last few years include a Wildland Fire Sensor Challenge to improve technology for real-time monitoring of wildfires; the Campus Rainworks Challenge, a green infrastructure design competition for college students; and the Nutrient Sensor Action Challenge, in which organizations demonstrate real-world deployment of low-cost sensor networks and how the data can be used for environmental management decisions.

EPA has not been using gamification in a big way, but I have been impressed with this approach of using serious games and game design elements to conduct research. A great example is Eyewire, funded by the National Institutes of Health, in which participants actually help map the 3D structure of neurons–a task that computers are not able to perform. I do have some EPA colleagues that work on games that can be used as part of STEM education and environmental outreach. EPA researcher Rebecca Dodder created a game called Generate: The Game of Energy Choices, a board game of energy choices and environmental consequences. Her work takes a complex model, and gamifies it so students can gain insights in energy and environmental choices and understand environmental impacts on climate, air and water.

 

Based on our conversation with Benforado, federal agencies like the EPA appear to be utilizing all of their resources to advance their missions in new and creative ways—and in doing so, helping their citizen partners become more informed about their immediate environments and communities. When asked what he’d like readers to take away about his team’s work at the EPA, Benforado stressed his belief that the engagement of the public, both at the individual level within neighborhoods or communities and at the regional level in terms of watersheds and airsheds, can augment current environmental monitoring and lead to improved understanding and management of environmental problems. Regardless of the struggles the EPA has faced recently, Benforado is excited about how the agency is harnessing innovative technology like low-cost sensors and inclusive strategies to improve environmental quality and public health. Policy makers take note—crowdsourcing isn’t just for Kickstarter campaigns anymore.

Note: Interview content has been lightly edited for length with approval from interviewee.

Featured photo: cc/(Smederevac, photo ID: 1053263016, from iStock by Getty Images)