Category Archives: Museum of Science

Museum of Science Boston

ECAST Featured in GAO Open Innovation Report

For Immediate Release Contact: Mahmud Farooque, (202) 446-0397

October 18, 2016 (WASHINGTON) – In a new report on open innovation, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlights the work of the Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (ECAST) network in engaging the public. The report, “Open Innovation: Practices to Engage Citizens and Effectively Implement Federal Initiatives,” features ECAST’s project with NASA to bring citizen voices into decisions about the agency’s Asteroid Initiative. GAO cites the project as an example of “practices that promote the effective implementation of open innovation strategies.”

Open innovation in federal initiatives is intended to help address complex challenges by engaging with the public to harness ideas and expertise outside government. In its work with NASA, ECAST created deliberative forums where citizens could express their views on planetary defense and space exploration. By learning about and discussing NASA’s Asteroid Initiative, citizens provided informed perspectives on the complex tradeoffs regarding the costs, risks, and benefits of various policy options.

According to the GAO report, “NASA officials used this input to inform … decisions about its future mission and technology investment goals.” These forums “provided NASA with insights into public understanding and views on NASA’s asteroid work.” Because the project engaged non-experts, who are representative of the general population but are generally underrepresented in technology-related policymaking, these forums offered citizen perspectives that government decision makers would not otherwise have.

ECAST has been a leader in bringing citizen views and values into the policymaking process. The ECAST network is led by Arizona State University’s Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes and partners with the Museum of Science, Boston, SciStarter, and The Loka Institute. The GAO report is an important validation of the tools and methods that ECAST has developed. As it continues to work with federal agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency, ECAST is building on the lessons and best practices for citizen engagement highlighted in the GAO report.

Prepared by: Jason Lloyd
Program Manager, Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes (CSPO)
Production Manager & Book Review Editor, Issues in Science and Technology
School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University

World Wide Views Dissemination: Boston

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Participants gathered on a rainy night at the Museum of Science in Boston this past Thursday, November 12, to get a taste of the World Wide Views experience and discuss some of the results that make the US unique compared with the rest of the world. Over the course of a two-hour event, attendees learned about the day of deliberation that took place on June 6, heard from a participant in the deliberation, tried out one of the sessions, and discussed the US results.

To get a taste of the WWViews experience, attendees went through the first session from June 6, including watching the video of background information, discussing in groups, and voting on the six questions for the first session.

Unsurprisingly, the group who chose to attend this event agreed that climate change is very concerning, as shown in the voting results below.

Other than that, their results were very well aligned with the US as a whole. They were slightly more likely than the original US participants to say that adaptation and mitigation should be focused on equally (90% vs. 68%), rather than primarily mitigation. They were also slightly more likely to say the world should do whatever it takes to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

During the discussion comparing the US results to the rest of the world’s results, participants shared insights about what they thought might make the US unique. For the question about the balance between adaptation and mitigation, the US was more likely to recommend focusing on both, rather than primarily adaptation. Attendees suggested that this might come from a “can-do attitude” in the US, as well as our greater access to resources and technologies that might help with mitigation efforts, whereas other countries might only be able to adapt.

Regarding the question of urgency in tackling the issue of climate change, one participant said, “I was very surprised to see in general how well aligned the US results were with the worldwide view. It was encouraging to see so much of the world would do whatever it takes.”

Another interesting conversation came up around responsibility for tackling climate change. The US ranked the options in the same order as the rest of the world but put less emphasis on an international agreement and citizens and civil society, balanced out by a greater emphasis on businesses and the private sector and local authorities. Participants suggested that this may be due to the US belief in market forces and management of issues at the local level.

The event was very enjoyable and productive thanks to an eager and thoughtful group of participants. And luckily, when they went home, the rain had stopped.

Museum of Science, Boston, Arizona State University Receive NOAA Grant

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November 6, 2015

BOSTON – The Museum of Science, Boston and Arizona State University’s Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes are among the six institutions awarded an Environmental Literacy Grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The NOAA Grants Program funds projects that strengthen environmental literacy among the public and elementary and high school students in an effort to enable the informed decision-making necessary for community resilience to extreme weather events and environmental changes.

The project, “Science Center Public Forums: Community Engagement for Environmental Literacy, Improved Resilience, and Decision-Making,” will use the more than $300,000 in NOAA funding to develop locally-based forums hosted by community science centers and create replicable models for learning and engagement. These community forums will establish partnerships between the public, members of the scientific community, local officials, and others, providing a framework for individuals and organizations around the country to implement.

“Whether it’s a flood, drought, hurricane, or snow storm, people across our nation are facing an increasing number of extreme weather events,” says U.S. Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). “I support continued efforts to strengthen public health and safety protections from the impacts of climate change. This new collaboration between the Museum of Science, Arizona State University, and NOAA will improve community resilience by creating key partnerships that will increase awareness of and develop solutions to environmental threats.”

To illustrate an example of these local science policy forums, the Museum recently co-hosted an event, “World Wide Views on Climate and Energy,” held at the Embassy of France in Washington, DC. The Museum shared the results of the World Wide Views on Climate and Energy symposium, the largest ever public consultation on climate change and energy, with local researchers, policy makers and citizens interested in climate science. This report will be used to inform the COP21, known as the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, in December 2015.

“We welcome the opportunity to collaborate with the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes at Arizona State University. The NOAA grant will allow us to embark on our Science Center Public Forums project and help strengthen community resilience to weather-related hazards,” said David Sittenfeld, Museum of Science forum program manager. “We are excited to use public deliberation in ways that will help strengthen community resilience to weather-related hazards, and we are pleased to work with Daniel Sarewitz, his team at Arizona State University, and our partners from Northeastern University and other science museums around the nation.”

The Museum’s project with ASU’s Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes will begin with forums in Boston and Phoenix, and will later expand to include six other U.S. sites. NOAA will incorporate their scientific data, data visualizations, access tools, and other aspects into all projects.

About the Museum of Science, Boston

One of the world’s largest science centers and New England’s most attended cultural institution, the Museum introduces almost 1.4 million visitors a year to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) via dynamic programs and hundreds of interactive exhibits. Founded in 1830, the Museum was first to embrace all the sciences under one roof and is the nation’s first science museum with a comprehensive strategy and infrastructure to foster technological literacy in museums and schools nationwide through its National Center for Technological Literacy®. Other highlights include The Science Behind Pixar, (through Jan 10, 2016), the Hall of Human Life, the Thomson Theater of Electricity, Charles Hayden Planetarium, Mugar Omni Theater, Gordon Current Science & Technology Center, Butterfly Garden and 4-D Theater. The Museum has led a 10-year, $41 million National Science Foundation-funded Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network of science museum and reaches over 20,000 teens a year worldwide via the Intel Computer Clubhouse Network. Visit www.mos.org.

Press Contact

Erin Shannon: 617-589-0250 or eshannon@mos.org

The Citizen between Science and Policy: Innovation in Governance and Climate Change Resilience

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On June 6, 2015, beginning at dawn in the Pacific Islands and ending at dusk in the American Southwest, 10,000 everyday citizens in 76 countries met to participate in the largest-ever public consultation on climate and energy. The results of the World Wide Views on Climate and Energy deliberations offer useful insight into citizens’ perspectives for addressing climate change and effecting a transition to low-carbon energy. On October 22, 2015, we will present and discuss the engagement model, key results, and policy implications of this unprecedented citizen engagement.

How can results from World’s largest citizen deliberation on climate inform, empower, and influence the negotiations leading to the Climate Conference in Paris (COP 21)?
How can Article 6 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) be enhanced to close the widening democratic gap between citizens and policymakers?
How can the engagement model developed for the four U.S. deliberations—collaborations between universities and local science centers—be used to inform and support other critical policy decisions?
How can we leverage citizen science, crowdsourcing, and participatory engagement models to empower citizens, inform climate assessments and decision-making, and build resilience from the ground up?

Presenting

Daniel Sarewitz

Co-Director Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes, Arizona State University

Richard Harris

Science Correspondent, National Public Radio

Ashley Allen

Lead negotiator for UNFCCC Article 6, U.S. Department of State

Ana Cohen

Director, Energy Climate and Natural Resources, Office of U.S. Senator Ed Markey

Emily Therese Cloyd

Engagement and Outreach Lead, U.S. Global Change Research Program

Keya Chatterjee

Executive Director, U.S. Climate Action Network

Ellie Johnston

Public Engagement Manager, Climate Interactive

Ed Maibach

Director, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University

and

World Wide Views Organizers and Participants

from Boston, MA, St. Paul, MN, Ft. Collins, CO, and Phoenix, AZ

Location Information

Embassy of France
4101 Reservoir Road NW
Washington, DC 20007

Reception featuring DC Climathon finalists (5:00 – 6:30 pm) & film screening of Luc Jacquet’s ICE & SKYto follow (7:00 -9:00 pm)

Click here to RSVP or visit: http://bit.ly/1X4uhdE

ASU-led partnership engages citizens in NASA’s Asteroid Initiative

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Posted: September 28, 2015

https://asunews.asu.edu/20150928-informing-nasa-asteroid-initiative

Jason Lloyd, jason.lloyd@asu.edu

(202) 684-2405

Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes

How can humans best protect the Earth from a potentially devastating asteroid impact? Could our ability to study an asteroid assist with both planetary defense and sending humans farther into our solar system? Once humans have advanced their space-exploration capacities, what should a future mission to Mars look like?

Making the public part of discussions such as these is the result of an innovative partnership between NASA and a network led by ASU’s Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes (CSPO). That partnership solicited non-expert citizens’ opinions on the NASA’s future missions as a way to directly engage the public in the space agency’s plans. A public report about the program, which describes the process and its outcomes, has recently become available for download.

At two public full-day forums in Boston and Phoenix last November, citizens participated in public deliberations, or “participatory technology assessment,” to learn about, discuss and share their views on several NASA missions. The forums focused on three topics: planetary defense, NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and mission scenarios for a journey to Mars. Their input was gathered and delivered to NASA.

“This new way of engaging with the public offers gives ordinary people a chance to learn about and offer their perspectives on important policy decisions,” noted David Guston, the director of ASU’s new School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the principle investigator on this project. “Decision makers gain insight into what is important for the citizens whose support they need. In this case, NASA received input for its future missions that will help the agency respond to both the concerns and excitement the public has about space exploration.”

CSPO is a founding member of the Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (ECAST) network, a group of universities, science centers and nonpartisan think tanks. In leading the ECAST team’s efforts, CSPO collaborated with the Museum of Science Boston and worked closely with NASA managers to host the two forums.

Participants at the daylong forums voiced strong support for implementing space-based asteroid-detection efforts. They indicated a preference for the ARM scenario that involved retrieving a boulder from a large asteroid and bringing it into orbit around the moon for study. And, for the Mars mission, participants balanced cost, schedule and risk in favor of first sending humans into orbit around the Red Planet, along with robotic exploration and potential Mars moon missions.

This project, building on CSPO’s efforts to bring public values into science and technology policymaking, elicited nuanced information from citizens that, as NASA discovered, can be extremely useful for robust decision making.

Preliminary results from the deliberations were shared with NASA managers prior to their ARM decision. In early 2015,NASA announced the ARM option it would pursue — the same mission that forum participants favored by a wide margin. ECAST also performed a detailed analysis of the results, as described in the technical report that was recently provided to NASA, which gives the space agency new knowledge of citizens’ perceptions to consider when planning future missions.

CSPO’s work on the NASA-ECAST project has laid the groundwork for additional engagement programs. Earlier this year, CSPO organized the U.S. component of the World Wide Views on Climate and Energy, a global citizen forum on addressing climate change. The results from those deliberations were just presented to the UN General Assembly in New York. In addition, CSPO and the Museum of Science Boston have recently been awarded a multi-year grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to use that agency’s considerable scientific assets to foster climate resilience in communities around the United States.

related events

Seminar, October 1: From Asteroids to Oceans: Using Public Engagement to Inform Policy Decisions. Speakers: Amy Kaminski, Office of the Chief Scientist at NASA Headquarters; Ira Bennett, School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University; Jason Kessler NASA’s Asteroid Grand Challenge Program; Mahmud Farooque, Consortium for Science, Policy, & Outcomes, DC Office; David Sittenfeld, Forum Program at the Museum of Science Boston; Darlene Cavalier, SciStarter and Science Cheerleader; David Tomblin, Science, Technology, and Society Program at University of Maryland; and, David Rabkin, Current Science and Technology at the Museum of Science Boston

World Wide Views Climate and Energy Forums in the US

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In a policy breakfast seminar in Washington DC on Thursday, March 19th, ECAST team members Rick Worthington, Mahmud Farooque, David Tomblin and Gretchen Gano introduced World Wide Views on Climate and Energy (WWViews C&E) project and hosting efforts in the US. WWViews C&E is a global citizen consultation organized by the Danish Board of Technology in collaboration with Missions Publiques and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat.

On June 6, 2015, about 100 citizens representing the demographic diversity of the host countries will attend daylong meetings at sites around the world. Participants will receive the same balanced and vetted information about issues on the agenda for the December 2015 UN climate summit in Paris, and discuss these issues at tables with 8 participants and a facilitator. Their views on these issues will be published online and presented at both preparatory meetings and at the climate summit.

ECAST, which previously coordinated the U.S. component of the 2012 World Wide Views on Biodiversity project at four US cities (Boston, Washington, Denver and Phoenix), is providing guidance, coordination and training for the 2015 WWViews C&E sites in the US, currently Boston, Tempe, Ft. Collins and St. Paul as well as working with experts at US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) to develop regional programing and outreach.

Get involved in our next big project—NASA’s Asteroid Initiative!

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Informing NASA’s Asteroid Initiative: A Citizen Forum

In its history, the Earth has been repeatedly struck by asteroids, large chunks of rock from space that can cause considerable damage in a collision. Can we—or should we—try to protect Earth from potentially hazardous impacts?

How about harvesting asteroids for potential economic benefits? Could asteroid exploration be used to boost our capabilities and help clear a pathway to Mars? How should we balance costs, risks, and benefits of human exploration in space?

Sounds like stuff just for rocket scientists. But how would you like to be part of this discussion?

An innovative project between NASA, the US government’s space agency, and a group led by Arizona State University called ECAST—Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology—is planning to do just that: allow ordinary citizens a say in decisions about the future of space exploration.

ECAST will hold forums this fall to engage ordinary citizens in active dialogue about NASA’s Asteroid Initiative. Discussion will cover topics from how to detect threatening asteroids and how to defend against them to strategies for human exploration of asteroids and the space beyond the moon.

The citizen forums will engage diverse publics in respectful, reflective and informed conversations, both face-to-face and online. The goal is to enable participants to learn about such issues, develop their own questions, and make recommendations based on their own values and interests.

How you can participate

“Informing NASA’s Asteroid Initiative: A Citizen Forum” will be held in Phoenix on Saturday, November 8, 2014, from 9am until 5pm, and in Boston on Saturday, November 15, 2014, from 9am until 5pm. ECAST will select a pool of diverse participants aged 18 and above. Individuals selected for the forum who complete the deliberation will receive $100 stipend.

Apply to participate in:

(You’ll be redirected to Survey Monkey for the application. If you prefer, you can download a PDF of the application and mail it to the address on the application.)
Download application for:

Don’t live in Boston or Phoenix?

Anyone age 18 or above can register to participate online. You will get access to the same background information, and will be asked to respond to the same questions about NASA’s Asteroid Initiative as will the participants in Boston and Phoenix. There is no stipend for online participants, but your opinion is greatly valued, and will be fully included in the report to NASA. Learn more here…

“Public engagement is crucial to the effective development of science and technology policy,” said David Guston, Co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes (CSPO), one of the founding members of ECAST. “It is essential to consider input from diverse constituents, and nowhere are citizens’ values, hopes and dreams more important than in the future of the planet and the future of humans in space.”

Expert & Citizen Assessment of Science & Technology

A Distributed Network of Institutions for Peer to Peer Public Deliberation

Category Archives: Museum of Science

ECAST Featured in GAO Open Innovation Report

World Wide Views Dissemination: Boston

Museum of Science, Boston, Arizona State University Receive NOAA Grant

November 6, 2015

Press Contact

The Citizen between Science and Policy: Innovation in Governance and Climate Change Resilience

Presenting

Location Information

ASU-led partnership engages citizens in NASA’s Asteroid Initiative

related stories

related events

World Wide Views Climate and Energy Forums in the US

Get involved in our next big project—NASA’s Asteroid Initiative!

Informing NASA’s Asteroid Initiative: A Citizen Forum

How you can participate

Apply to participate in:

Don’t live in Boston or Phoenix?