Citizen science approaches to surveillance and mitigation of invasive mosquito vectors of disease: Examples from South America and Africa

Citizen science is a powerful tool supporting scientific research that benefits from the velocity, volume, value, variety and veracity that big data can provide, and both citizen science programs and data provide opportunities for collaboration and research for early career professionals. Citizen science smartphone mobile applications designed for public use supports the rapid response of communities to invasive threats. NASA's GLOBE Observer Mosquito Habitat Mapper is a citizen science data collection app available as a no cost download to the public. At a local scale, the app supports at-risk communities to contribute to surveillance and mitigation of mosquito vectors of disease. Globally, the app enables citizens to contribute to NASA science and to our understanding of the complex relationship between environmental variables, ecosystem dynamics and the changing distribution of mosquitoes on the landscape. The app is available for use in 127 countries and currently available in 14 languages. All data is open and readily available for analysis by scientists through an API or as a csv file.