13. Citizen Science for Urbanization, Disaster, and Environmental Management

Rapid urbanization around the world has come with problems such as environmental degradation, stress on resources due to increasing demand, incompetent or incompatible supply mechanisms, and lack of strong governance. On top of these grievances, urban communities are highly vulnerable to disaster and environmental impacts. Hence, in addressing these problems, urban development should lean towards a data-driven approach, especially accounting for citizen- generated data and technologies. The paper showcases how volunteered geographic information is being used in solving critical urban issues, particularly disaster risk reduction and environmental management. This chapter instigates the motivation in the contribution, challenges, and sustainability of citizen-generated data in the context of Nepal from campaigns such as: mapping in OpenStreetMap, urban street lights mapping, and urban tree mapping. Additionally, the paper highlights how these datasets are being used to draw the attention of the policymakers and unlock the potential of data-driven decision-making to solve urban issues.