Long night of research

The Lange Nacht der Forschung (Long Night of Research) is an Austrian initiative to open the doors of research institutions to the interested public. In collaboration with the Institute for Science and Technology (IST) and other institutions in lower Austria, IIASA will take part in a science festival at IST in Klosterneuberg, joining around seven other research institutes to share and present their work.  

Researchers from the Ecosystems Services and Analysis program will bring two games to the event, which aim to engage the general public in scientific data collection and analysis: Picture Pile and Fotoquest Austria. Steffen Fritz, group leader of the Earth Observation Systems (EOS) group within the Ecosystems and Analysis program, will give a presentation ("Gaming for Science") at 8pm in the AudiMax at IST.

Picture Pile makes use of very high resolution satellite images spanning the last decade to help researchers build a better map of deforestation.  The game is arranged as a pile of picture pairs, with side-by-side images of the same location several years apart. It asks, “Do you see tree loss over time?” After examining the image the player drags the image right to say “yes,” left for “no,” or down to say “maybe” if it is not clear.”The goal is to sort all 5 million photos in the data set. Once that’s done, the researchers say they plan to continue the game, turning the focus to other questions related to deforestation and land use change. More info>>

FotoQuest Austria is a summer citizen science campaign which allows participants to explore the outdoors while taking pictures and collecting observations for science, using a game-like app on their mobile devices. The project was launched in 2015 and started up again on 1 April 2016. The goal is to collect information on urban expansion and the preservation of wetlands, which store large amounts of carbon dioxide and are therefore important for limiting climate change.  The current campaign is the second of several planned over the next four years. By providing a snapshot of land cover over the course of several years, researchers will be able to track changes in land use. More info: http://fotoquest.at/

Event Details

22 April 2016
17:00 - 23:00
IST, Klosterneuburg
langenachtderforschung.at

Last edited: 14 October 2016