Enabling Citizen Science in Rural Environments with IoT and Mobile Technologies Unai Lopez-Novoa Department of Computer Languages and Systems University of the Basque Country 48013 Bilbao, Spain Jefrey Morgan Data Innovation Research Institute (DIRI) Cardif University Cardif, CF24 3AA, UK Kathryn Jones, Omer Rana School of Computer Science & Informatics Cardif University Cardif, CF24 3AA, UK Tim Edwards Cardif Business School Cardif University Cardif, CF10 3EU, UK Fabio Grigoletto Campus Lagoa do Sino Federal University of São Carlos Buri - SP, 18290-000, Brazil ABSTRACT Citizen Science focuses on engaging and incentivising individuals to collect, categorise and sometimes analyse scientific data. Over the last few years, many of these projects have contributed to relevant scientific discoveries, but bringing them to successful completion is often full of challenges and complexities. In this paper we present our progress in the creation and deployment of a Citizen Science project in Guapiruvu, a village located in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. We propose an IoT communications platform based on LoRa- enabled Raspberry Pis, which act as network hubs, and which can communicate directly with smartphone hosted applications. This platform is used to run a messaging app that allows two or more smartphones to exchange text over a LoRa network. We tested the platform in the village and results show that communication was possible up to 220 meters, even if one of the hubs was located in an area densely populated with trees. We also discuss how Sapelli Collector, a popular Citizen Science-enabler app, can be used over our developed infrastructure, and mechanisms that can used to increase adoption. KEYWORDS Citizen Science, IoT, LoRa, Mobile Computation 1 INTRODUCTION Supporting ‘citizen science’ projects with personally owned sys- tems and devices has seen significant growth in recent years [4]. This includes the use of smart phones that enable data capture with geo-referencing. This data is subsequently delivered to a cloud service for storage and analysis. A number of citizen science appli-cations have been proposed in recent years, ranging from pollution monitoring in cities to monitoring of local habitats [1]. A key premise of citizen science projects is to engage volunteers to gather or process data, and subsequently to use this data (as part of a bigger data collection effort), to address scientific question(s) of interest to a community. Data generated through a citizen science project is combined/co-referenced to curated data obtained from more official sources, e.g. government agencies. Understanding how participants involved in such an effort can be incentivised to engage actively remains a challenge for a successful project. Citizen science projects are closely aligned with efforts in ‘cyber-physical-social’ systems, whereby the social dynamics and incentive mechanisms within the group of (usually) volunteers are key to the successful delivery of its outcomes. Understanding how human users, who are often not technical experts in the systems they use, can use mobile technologies to support data capture and sense-making is particularly useful when dealing with global challenges – e.g. climate change, sustainable development, etc. Citizen science therefore provides a good example of how cyber-physical-social systems (CPSS) can be utilized in a particular context. Studying the potential impact that CPSS have on humans and how they use these systems to undertake problem solving, and vice versa, remain important challenges. The capability available through sensors embedded in smart phones (accelerometer, microphone, camera), associated apps, and externally hosted infrastructure (e.g. internet of things & edge devices) has significantly altered the range of possible applications that can be realised. Many of these systems however rely on the existence of a backbone communications network to transmit the data from the user device to a cloud system. Where such network is only available intermittently (or not at all), understanding how a data transmission infrastructure can be provisioned, supported through ‘citizen’ effort, remains a challenge. 50 1st Workshop on Cyber-Physical Social Systems (CPSS2019), October 22, 2019, Bilbao, Spain. Copyright © 2019 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).