Citizen science is a way of involving citizens in research projects, allowing the public to work in collaboration with experts to solve relevant problems. It consists of a wide variety of activities such as making and recording observations, measuring local conditions or notifying sightings of, for instance, wild animal species. Within the One Health PACT project, citizens are involved through multiple programs: Muggenradar, Mosquito Alert, Viruskenner and even some yet to be developed applications within this project! These programs aim to collect data on both mosquito and ecological factors, as well as on human health. By including citizens in the One Health PACT, we can expand the data collection efforts necessary to monitor, prevent and control arboviral spread, while highlighting the relevance of our project and educating the public on impactful issues. This way, we hope to create a great impact with our research project on prevention of arboviral spread with the help of the public. Below you can find our current three citizen science projects.

One of the main objectives of this project is to detect arbovirus infections in returning travellers. For this reason, travellers visiting specific areas in Europe will be invited to participate in this study and involved in data collection using a new mobile-health application.

The One Health PACT project takes place within a multidisciplinary research field. The aim of our project is to extensively look into all aspects of preparedness of potential arboviral introduction and spread. To reach this goal, many partners from different fields are involved. Among those partners are the universities, where our PhD students and Post-doc are located. In addition to that, the NWO financed this project together with several co-financiers that all provide their expertise in different research fields. Lastly, there are national and international collaborating partners involved in the project by sharing data and knowledge with our researchers. An overview of all the partners is given below.