Geoscience Reference
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exchange research. There is a growing number of examples of fostering innova-
tion through open communication and collaboration. For example, the Web site
InnoCentive is an “open innovation and crowdsourcing pioneer that enables
organizations to solve their key problems by connecting them to diverse sources
of innovation including employees, customers, [and] partners” (InnoCentive
2012). It uses a “challenge-driven innovation” method that supports innovation
programs. Another example of a collaborative-network approach is the National
Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, which supports research across
disciplines, uses existing data to address ecologic challenges and challenges in
allied fields, and encourages the use of science to support management and pol-
icy decisions.
Collaboration can also take the form of interaction with members of the
general public (which may include people who have scientific expertise). As
discussed in Chapter 3, massive online collaboration, also known as crowd-
sourcing, involves issuing an open call that allows an undefined large group of
people or community (crowd) to address a problem or issue that is traditionally
addressed by specific individuals. With a well-designed process, crowdsourcing
can help to assemble quickly the data, expertise, and resources required to per-
form a task or solve a problem by allowing people and organizations to collabo-
rate freely and openly across disciplinary and geographic boundaries.
The idea behind regulatory crowdsourcing is that almost every kind of
regulation today, from air and water quality to food safety and financial services,
could benefit from having a larger crowd of informed people helping to gather,
classify, and analyze shared pools of publicly accessible data—data that can be
used to educate the public, enhance science, inform public policy-making, or
even spur regulatory enforcement actions. Today, a growing number of regula-
tory agencies (including EPA, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and
the US Food and Drug Administration) see social media and online collabora-
tion as a means of providing richer, more useful, and more interactive pathways
for participation. EPA is no stranger to crowdsourcing. Indeed, for the 2009
Toxic Release Inventory, EPA released preliminary data to the public to utilize
crowdsourcing as a means for improving and refining the data. The public right-
to-know dimension of TRI provided an early example of using informational
approaches to encourage environmental change, and also spurred the develop-
ment of sites like MapEcos.org and Scorecard.org, which provide visual Web-
based interfaces that enable citizens to see toxic emissions data and more in one
place.
There are several opportunities for crowdsourcing or citizen science (the
involvement of the general public in monitoring or other forms of data collec-
tion) to augment or enhance EPA scientific and regulatory capabilities, includ-
ing crowdsourced data collection, urban sensing, and environmental problem-
solving. In some domains, EPA would be poised to launch efforts in the near
term on the basis of its experiences and existing infrastructure. In others, there
would need to be investment in key technologies or resources to make the ef-
forts practical and informative.
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