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Mosquito Alert is a citizen science project that enrols citizens in data collection of invasive and disease vector mosquitoes. It started in 2013 with the name of Atrapa el Tigre (“Catch the tiger”). The project centers data collection in Spain and targets the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) and the Yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti). Other species might be also collected, but are not specifically targeted. Data collected is freely available to everyone (after a process of sensitive data exclusion and data filtering and validation) and used by scientists and public health practitioners. The project has involved schools in data collection and public health actors in data use.

Data Collection, processing and sharing
As many other citizen science projects, data collection is done using smartphone technologies and a project app. Participants can notify geolocated observations of the targeted species and/or their breeding sites and accompany them with photographs, notes and other complementary information.

Data is validated by a group of expert entomologists and shared via an online interactive map. Participants can also validate data from other participants. Project data is partially available for download under a CC0 license in the project online map and in the GBIF portal.

The project app also collects random and approximate locations of participants, as a proxy of sampling effort. This information is used, together with the observations collected, to model the probability of a participant sending Asian tiger mosquitoes in a given place in Spain. Model results can be explored online as well [External Link].

Relation to environmental and public health policy
The project provides evidence at different stages of policy-making: problem definition, early-warning, policy implementation and compliance. For instance, the project provides data that can orient remediation actions or help to discover the species in new areas or regions and has been used by public health agents in city control practices. In the city of Barcelona, the project has been incorporated in the city Surveillance and Control Programme and provided data in specific cases of epidemiological control with Zika virus. The project is also considered a tool to include and engage citizens in the fight against these species. Mosquito Alert was selected to be presented as a case study at the first briefing on Citizen Science (support for EU environmental and research policies) for Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) on 7th September 2016 within the premises of the European Parliament in Brussels.

Project milestones: new knowledge obtained from citizen scientists and implications for mosquito surveillance and control
Data contributed from citizens in the Mosquito Alert project has triggered relevant new detections of Aedes albopictus specimens in Spain and of related species:


 * First detection of Aedes albopictus  in the Autonomous Community of Andalucía (2014)
 * First detection of Aedes albopictus  in the Autonomous Community of Aragón (2015)
 * First detection of Aedes japonicus in Spain

The project also contributed to update the status of the species in Spain and to help give evidence of the direct dispersal of these species by private cars. The project has also contributed in the discovery of new mosquito species (unrelated to the project) in some Spanish regions.

The impact that the project had on surveillance and control in Spain, and the fact that it proved to be able to be comparable to traditional surveillance methods or even better if compared the cost-effectiveness of such programmes in Spain, as well as the existence and impact of other similar projects elsewhere offers new innovative frameworks for surveillance and control of disease vectors. It is argued that both methods (traditional surveillance methods vs innovative participatory monitoring approaches) have benefits and caveats and can thus be complementary.

Global Mosquito Alert Consortium
In 2017, leaders from several citizen science projects related to mosquito disease vectors gathered in an international workshop supported by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA)’s Policy Working Group and the The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, that seeded the current global initiative Global Mosquito Alert. This initiative aims at sharing similar practices with the final aim to integrate existing and future initiatives at a global scale, to give an answer to the inherent problem related to this species: globalization and their global spread. Mosquito Alert is one of the participant projects.