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Leveraging the collaborative power of AI and citizen science for sustainable development

Nature Sustainability volume 8, pages 125–132 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Both artificial intelligence (AI) and citizen science hold immense potential for addressing major sustainability challenges from health to climate change. Alongside their individual benefits, when combined, they offer considerable synergies that can aid in both better monitoring of, and achieving, sustainable development. While AI has already been integrated into citizen science projects such as through automated classification and identification, the integration of citizen science approaches into AI is lacking. This integration has, however, the potential to address some of the major challenges associated with AI such as social bias, which could accelerate progress towards achieving sustainable development.

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Fig. 1: The current and future applications of AI in citizen science projects, benefits of combining AI and citizen science to address AI challenges, and ultimate benefits for the SDGs and sustainable development more broadly.
Fig. 2: Roadmap for citizen science and AI integration.

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Acknowledgements

D.F., L.S., S.F. and I.M. gratefully acknowledge funding from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the National Member Organizations that support IIASA. In addition, this research is partly supported by the European Union’s Horizon Europe-funded CROPS (GA no. 101131696), OEMC (GA no. 101059548), GRANULAR (GA no. 101061068), ECS (GA no. 101058509), PATTERN (GA no. 101123291) and ECSTATIC (GA no. 101123291) projects. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the EU. We also acknowledge the inputs from E. Cherel and C. Nastar.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advancing Systems Analysis Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria

    Dilek Fraisl, Linda See, Steffen Fritz & Ian McCallum

  2. Citizen Science Global Partnership (CSGP), Laxenburg, Austria

    Dilek Fraisl & Steffen Fritz

  3. Department of Geography, University College London (UCL), London, UK

    Mordechai Haklay (Muki)

  4. Research Unit Learning Transitions (UR LT, joint unit with CY Cergy Paris University), Learning Planet Institute, Paris, France

    Mordechai Haklay (Muki)

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  1. Dilek Fraisl
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  2. Linda See
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Contributions

D.F. conceptualized the idea, designed the study, method and figures, carried out the investigation and wrote the paper. L.S. made notable contributions to the writing and framing of the paper, as well as the figures. M.H. contributed to the framing and reviewed and edited the manuscript. I.M. and S.F. reviewed and edited the paper.

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Correspondence to Dilek Fraisl.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Darlene Cavalier, Maryam Lotfian and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Fraisl, D., See, L., Fritz, S. et al. Leveraging the collaborative power of AI and citizen science for sustainable development. Nat Sustain 8, 125–132 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01489-2

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