Considerations and the necessity of designing a citizen science application software for monitoring hydroclimatic variables (case study: introducing and evaluating the effectiveness of “Payeshyar” App)

In recent decades people around the world have embraced "smartphones" and their technologies. The application softwares (Apps) in these devices have become efficient and easy to use. Citizen science (CS) projects that attempt to collect data affordably from people of diverse backgrounds require the design and delivery of a user-friendly technology. In this research, an attempt was made, through reviewing the steps of designing a CS App to address the considerations and necessity of designing and disseminating a CS App with the subject of meteorology and hydrology. Payeshyar App that has been designed by the authors aimed at monitoring three parameters of air temperature, precipitation and water level in border and remote villages of Golestan. In order to gain sufficient experience, after placing simple and inexpensive measurement tools at the disposal of volunteers, the necessary data were collected for a period five months (December 2021-May 2022) via various communication methods including text messages, phone calls, paper and pencil forms and social media Apps. After that, necessary feedbacks and tips were recorded and according to the experiences gained, the initial version of Payeshyar was designed. In addition, in this research, by comparing the data collected through this App during eight months (June 2022 -January 2023) with the conventionally recorded data at formally established monitoring stations, its weaknesses and strengths were listed and its efficiency was investigated. Finally, the review of the effectiveness, advantages, disadvantages, limitations and challenges of Payeshyar showed that a well-designed Apps that can be installed and run on smartphones facilitates the communication of information from users to relevant databases and researches and seems that they are necessary to promote and expand long-term monitoring and surveillance systems based on CS. However, methods of sending meteorological and hydrological data to CS systems is a new field that needs more research.