Hooray, Scivil turned four! Curious about the highlights from 2022 and our ambitions for 2023? We've summarized it for you in this infographic.

As a knowledge centre, we naturally want to disseminate existing knowledge and expertise, but we also want to continue to learn and gain experience. Therefore, we are involved as a partner in three citizen science projects.

Discover the projects below. 

• Amai!, our citizen science project (in collaboration with Knowledge Centre Data & Society) involving citizens in the development of artificial intelligence, is starting a new cycle. We start with citizens’ ideas about AI, co-create solutions, and end with the actual co-development of solutions through an open call for consortia. This third edition also has an additional focus on collaboration with schools. Curious about the selected 2022 projects? Discover them here (Dutch article).
• 'NieuwsWijsNeuzen' ('NewsKnowAlls') wants to make children (ages 8-12) more resilient against disinformation by focusing on news literacy, both among (youth) journalists and among children. Within this project, Scivil will create a checkpoint for disinformation on social media, in co-creation with researchers, children and journalists. 
• Scivil will be part of a project to measure and map environmental noise in Flanders. We will help develop the citizen engagement process and help to include hard-to-reach target groups. 

Did you now we are also active on social media? We tweet and toot in English on Twitter and Mastodon. On Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, we post in Dutch. Follow us for updates on our activities!

Last month, the Belgian Federal Scientific Institutions met at the Africamuseum in Tervuren to exchange experiences on citizen science. Scivil was present to give insight into the Flemish citizen science landscape. We also came into contact with many exciting citizen science initiatives.

Flanders Training Network for Methodology and Statistics (FLAMES), the interuniversity network on research methodology and statistics, organizes an annual symposium. This year's symposium on April 28 will be entirely devoted to citizen science. Our coordinator Annelies will provide an opening talk on citizen science. Read more about the program here. 

Flanders may only have a small coastline, but we do have a big annual shell counting day! The sixth edition of this annual shell counting day will take place on Saturday, March 25. In each of the ten coastal municipalities, shell experts will help citizens at counting stations collect and identify shells. In addition, this year's shell counting day is expanding beyond national borders. The Netherlands and northern France are also counting shells at their coasts. 

Telraam is a citizen science project in which citizens help collect objective traffic data. Telraam’s methodology is already being used in several places all over Europe through the WeCount project. Telraam recently launched its new sensor, the Telraam S2. It’s a specially designed and upgraded version of the multimodal traffic counter. The new device uses AI technology to generate highly accurate and targeted traffic counts. In addition, Telraam is hosting their first “Telraam Talks Live!” on March 29, where they will officially introduce the new sensor to the general public. 

In and around Johannesburg, the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO) hyper-accurately mapped heat stress in six different neighbourhoods in early 2022, during the South African summer. They did so in close cooperation with the local population. This way, cities can monitor differences in heat at the neighbourhood level. The resulting maps show huge differences between rich, residential neighbourhoods and poor townships. 

The Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB) and the Young Academy annually present science communication awards to scientists with exceptional merits in science communication. At the end of 2022, two citizen science projects (Dutch article) were awarded! ‘Curieuzeneuzen in de Tuin’, a major citizen science project on heat and drought, received an award for their clever communication campaign and innovative Internet-of-Things technology that reached an exceptionally large audience. MamaMito, a project on genetic genealogy, received an award for their engaging approach that allowed participants to deeply experience the research process.