Reframing Citizen Science as A Method for The Co-Production of Hazard and Disaster Risk Reduction Knowledge

Encalada Simbana, Marjorie Elizabeth (2025) Reframing Citizen Science as A Method for The Co-Production of Hazard and Disaster Risk Reduction Knowledge. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

PDF Restricted to Repository staff only until 30 November 2027. Request a copy

Abstract

This thesis explores how participatory and citizen science approaches can foster meaningful engagement, learning, and the co-production of knowledge in geohazard-prone contexts. Centred on four case studies in Ecuador, a rural Indigenous school (Cebadas), an urban school (Juan Montalvo), a science museum (MIC), and a peri-urban community (Santa Rosa), the research investigates how scientific instruments, and participatory activities can act as catalysts for dialogue, collaboration, and trust between communities and scientists.

Using a mixed-methods, longitudinal design (2021–2025), the study integrates workshops, meetings, observations, self-reflection, and interviews to trace changes in participation, knowledge co-production, understanding, trust, and legacy over time. Instruments such as seismometers, weather stations, and homemade ash meters were repurposed as boundary objects (tools that mediate between knowledge systems) allowing participants to connect lived experience with scientific concepts and to generate shared understanding of hazards, instruments, risk, and data.

Findings demonstrate that instruments and participatory activities can move citizen science beyond its traditional data-gathering role toward a relational, reciprocal, and co-productive practice. The study shows how participatory processes created the conditions for co-production to emerge. Participants related instruments and data to their own experiences, transforming science into something tangible, locally relevant, and socially embedded. Trust emerged through transparency, reciprocity, and continuity of engagement, while tangible (instruments, networks) and intangible (knowledge, preparedness, confidence) legacies proved vital for the sustainability of participatory initiatives.

The research concludes that citizen science, when reframed as a participatory, reflexive, and co-creative practice, can transform the relationship between people and science. Instruments, when used as catalysts, open new possibilities for engagement, dialogue, and collective learning, supporting informed decision-making and strengthening disaster risk reduction. Co-production of knowledge is understood as an ongoing process, through which uncertainty can be transformed into understanding and vulnerability into collaboration. This study contributes to Science and Technology Studies (STS) and participatory theory by showing how knowledge, trust, and material engagement intersect in hazard contexts, emphasising that legacy and trust are co-constitutive processes that must be intentionally designed to endure beyond project timelines.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	21 May 2026 07:30
Last Modified:	21 May 2026 07:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103119
DOI:

Actions (login required)

View Item