Towards its goal of accelerating the co-creation of CS standards, OTTERS organised webinars to 1) showcase successful approaches from diverse citizen-engagement projects and 2) host expert discussions on standardisation challenges. Topics ranged from methodology, data sharing, and accessibility to legal and ethical issues concerning privacy, authorship, data transfer, exploitation, and the use of AI with citizen-generated data. Concerns included ownership, recognition of authorship, user notification, and ethical implications of emerging tools such as Generative AI and Digital Twins. As these evolve, continued dialogue and clear guidelines remain essential.
To evaluate CS effectiveness in research, innovation, and policy, OTTERS co-organised with Iliad a session at the Ocean Best Practices Workshop VII. Discussions explored technical and legal challenges of integrating CS data into repositories for monitoring, compliance, forecasting, commercial use, and digital twins. An in-person workshop during the ECSA Conference focused on aligning CS data with EU freshwater and marine policies and UN SDGs. Outcomes — expert feedback, recorded sessions, and project-led research — informed three papers on CS data standardisation and policy integration, now published (one pending review), offering practical recommendations to embed CS in legislation, strengthen SDG reporting, and enhance participatory decision-making.
The ECSA workshop also led to the creation of the ECSA Aquatic Ecosystems & CS Working Group, co-chaired by three consortium members, to advance collaboration on CS standardisation in aquatic ecosystems.
OTTERS embedded CS in transformative initiatives through co-design exercises and surveys with diverse stakeholders, identifying pathways to scale up CS. A repository of past and ongoing campaigns guided pilot Spring-to-Sea campaigns in Portugal, Italy, and Armenia. Tested guidebooks were consolidated into a final toolkit on water stewardship, with additional activities in the Netherlands, Greece, Ukraine, and Israel.
To promote ocean literacy, OTTERS organised European and local workshops, two summer schools (Greece 2024, Portugal 2025), and national-language trainings. Two online courses and an Armenian toolkit were produced, and Armenian schools secured a ProBleu grant. These efforts culminated in the OTTERS Waves of Change conference and published abstracts.
For long-term access, the CS Resource Hub was launched on the OTTERS and eu-citizen.science platforms. Over 30 months, OTTERS engaged at high-profile events (UNOC3, Digital Ocean Fora, European Ocean Days, CS4Water, ECSA), disseminating results, promoting best practices, and advancing Mission Ocean. Building on these foundations, partners launched new projects such as CS-MACH1 to create a marine citizen science data network.
