We are delighted to announce, following our call for proposals earlier this year, the successful COBWEB Co-Design projects!

The Outward Bound Trust will be embedding COBWEB into their ongoing activities with young people around the Dyfi Biosphere area, engaging with all three of COBWEB’s use case areas: biodiversity, flooding, and verification of Earth Observation products. Ysgol Bro Hyddgen, a school based in Machynllyth, will similarly work across use cases with their pupils. Penparcau Community Forum and Coetiroedd Dyfi Woodlands will both be engaging their communities in the monitoring of local species. And RSPB Ynys-Hir (salt marsh and peat bog habitats), Snowdonia National Park Authority (invasive species), and Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife group (megafauna) will engage in work that examines biodiversity and land cover in their projects.

These co-design projects, funded by COBWEB, bring together a wealth of local expertise in environmental projects, a vibrant community of volunteers and communities, and the expertise of the researchers and developers who are bringing the COBWEB platform to life.

On 16 October all seven co-design projects met at an event in Y Plas, in Machynllyth, Wales (see picture above), providing an opportunity for the projects to meet each other, to discuss their projects with the COBWEB team, and to talk through their plans for the year ahead. 

The COBWEB team are hugely excited to be working with these highly engaged groups to develop and design the COBWEB citizen science infrastructure, and to test it when the projects’ public activities begin in early 2015.

You can find out much more about all of the projects in the second issue of the COBWEB Newsletter, which is a Co-Design Special. We will also be adding news and updates from the project throughout the year, so do keep an eye on this news page.

The co-design inititiative is also featured on one of two posters which the COBWEB team will be presenting, alongside a live demonstration of the COBWEB architecture, at the Citizens Observatories: Empowering European Society event, which takes place in Brussels tomorrow – look out for a write up of this shortly!