Current projects

For our national tick monitoring programme, we invite you to provide us with ticks. Your samples will help us analyse which tick species appear when and where in Austria. Moreover, ticks will also be investigated for the presence of pathogens. What are the aims of the project? The goal of…

How to raise the village to raise the child The Village Project supports children and adolescents of parents with mental health issues by strengthening their formal and informal support networks. The aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Village approach and integrate it sustainably into existing structures. What are…

A couple of Instagram stories here a TikTok video there: The pervasiveness of our everyday lives with more and more media content consumed in a short period of time has completely changed the way we access and deal with information: Due to their everyday use of and the strong fusion…

Relevance of mathematics lessons from the students' perspective The relevance that students attribute to mathematics education is a crucial variable for its success. Against this background, it is surprising that there is little international scientific evidence on these ideas. Instead, it is evident in various countries, including Austria, that students…

Breaking the blame game:  COwLEARNING for sustainable beef and dairy supply  Our society faces grand challenges, such as mitigating climate change and adapting to its consequences, ensuring a healthy diet and maintaining cultural landscapes with high biodiversity. A sustainable agri-food industry addresses these challenges.  In Austria, with its high share…

Giving a voice to children and adolescents: Co-research with children and adolescents in developing a model of health literacy Background Health literacy is crucial for promoting health and well-being It encompasses finding, understanding, evaluating, and applying health information and services to make informed decisions for maintaining or improving health and…

A project of the Viennese environmental protection department In spring (from early April), there's no doubt: the first swallows and swifts have returned from Africa to breed in Vienna. Other species, like house sparrow and jackdaw, have spent the winter with us and have already occupied their breeding places. House…

Spring mapping in the Großes Walsertal Biosphere Reserve (Austria) In view of increasing extreme weather events, including periods of drought and consequent water shortages, the protection and knowledge of springs in the Großes Walsertal Biosphere Reserve is becoming increasingly important. In addition to their essential role in water supply, springs…

Mosquito Alert is a citizen science project that allows tiger mosquitoes and other mosquitoes to be easily reported using a free app. Tiger mosquitoes are always smaller than a 1-cent coin, have a single white line on the back of the head and thoraxand white stripes on the body and legs.…

Since April 2021, the University of Vienna has been working on the project BaF - Biodiversity in Cemeteries in cooperation with Friedhöfe Wien GmbH (Vienna cemeteries). The aim is to document biodiversity (the occurrence of a wide variety of animals, plants and fungal species) and to investigate the active and…

State-of-the-art DNA technology and citizen science - "Frog in a drop of water" unleashes new prospects for amphibian research Detective work for amphibian protection - for the first time, amphibian screening is being carried out throughout Austria by detecting their DNA traces in water - and everyone can take part.…

DeVOTE is a research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) from January 2021 to December 2025, and led by Ass.-Prof. Carolina Plescia to develop and apply a new approach to study what ‘voting’ means for ordinary citizens. The project’s goals are: understand what ‘voting’ means for ordinary citizens; examine the variation…

The Pollen Diary was launched back in 2009 as a scientific project as part of a master's thesis at the WU Vienna Executive Academy. Meanwhile it has become an important service for pollen allergy sufferers in 13 European countries: Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Great Britain, Sweden, Finland, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Serbia,…

The lack of sustainability in human activity is leading to the global destabilisation of our natural systems. The resulting biodiversity and climate crises require a transformation to an environmentally sustainable society. However, the expertise in the field of taxonomy required for this transformation is often only shared by a few…

“Healthy Soil" research platform for Viennese community gardens As a follow-up project to "Heavy Metal City-Zen", we are once again inviting Viennese community gardens, garden projects or similar garden initiatives to take part in this project and conduct research together with us.  The aim of this project is to scientifically…

The AmphiBiom project is focused on the study of the European green toad in Austria. With the support of Citizen Scientists, we investigate the distribution of this endangered amphibian species, which, as a typical pioneer species, can quickly colonize newly emerging water bodies. Therefore, the European green toad is an…

In the Institute of Silviculture at the BOKU University, the occurrence, spread, causes and characteristics of forest fires in Austria have been analysed as part of various research projects since 2008. The array stretches back over several decades and includes approximately 8,000 fires, more than 7,000 of which were categorised…

What can we do to protect our wetlands and floodplains in Europe? What does the water management need to implement measure for the benefit of both the environment and the human society? The Horizon Europe project Restore4Life aims at offering an online system that supports the restoration of wetlands in Europe. One…

Better governance of ecosystem services at local scales in the Wienerwald region  A joint research project of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) and the University of Vienna.   What is ServeToPe studying and what are its goals? Society uses a variety of services that natural…

App for the scientific recording of Austrian butterflies On behalf of Blühendes Österreich - BILLA gemeinnützige Privatstiftunga, butterfly expert Peter Huemer published a report on the dramatic state of the butterfly fauna in May 2016. In Europe, their number had fallen by half since 1990 and over 50 percent of…

We are tracing the Sculptured Resin Bee! Home of the Sculptured Resin Bee (Megachile sculpturalis, Smith 1853) is far away in Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan. In 2008, the Sculptured Resin Bee was discovered in southern France as the first introduced wild bee species in Europe. Since then, the bee…

Language is one of the most important means of human communication, an essential part of our culture and it can also fulfill an identity-forming function. At the same time, it is constantly changing with the society that uses it. There are words that were used a century ago, but that…

Since 2006, a wide variety of nature observations can be reported on naturbeobachtung.at. Specially designed reporting masks for various groups of animals, plants and fungi allow detailed entries. The reporters can, as far as possible, identify their observations taxonomically or report them as "undetermined species". The latter can then be…

Amphibians and reptiles under observation in Austria Importance and evaluability of databases increase with the extent, the precision and the currency of the data stored. The Natural History Museum Vienna, one of the largest non-university research institutions in Austria, houses more than 30 million objects from the fields of biology,…

Important groundwork for bird protection The association BirdLife Austria has been researching and protecting the native avifauna for over 50 years. Citizen science has always been an essential basis of this work, as BirdLife's expertise is based on decades of collecting bird records. In the past, observations were recorded on…

Have you ever seen a sparrow hawk in Vienna? Did a badger cross your path on your way home at night? Or do you have swallow nests at your housing complex? We are interested in your observations in Austrian cities! The project works specifically in urban areas. With the help…

The CAMALIOT (Application of Machine Learning Technology for GNSS IoT Data Fusion) project The CAMALIOT project integrates data from the Internet of Things (IoT), including smartphones, and traditional Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data sources to leverage Big Data, Data Fusion and Machine Learning technologies to to demonstrate how these data can be used in different scientific…

In Viel-Falter: Butterfly Monitoring volunteers, together with researchers from the Department of Ecology of the University of Innsbruck, observe, identify and count butterflies. The aim is to build up and establish an Austria-wide systematic butterfly monitoring. Butterflies are an excellent indicator group for the ecologically extremely important animal group of insects.…

Due to the enormous request and the multitude of consignments of fossil images encompassing almost the entire Earth history, the precise issues and the resulting project target were adapted in accordance to the requirements and wishes oft he citizen scientists. The geographical and chronological distribution of fossils in Austria is…

Biodiversity and ecology of freshwater bacteria The bacterial genus Aquirufa, which was discovered and scientifically described in cooperation with pupils, is the eponym and focus of the research project. The aim is to research the ecology, biodiversity and distribution of Aquirufa in water bodies through the active and creative participation…

Promotion of child and youth-friendly urban landscapes through participatory research on urban green  The development of child- and youth-friendly cities is becoming increasingly important due to the deteriorating quality of life in urban areas. An important contribution to this relates to the provision of urban green suitable for young people…

It is an open secret that hardware operating on our smart devices contains not only plastic, but also conflict materials such as tungsten, tin, tantulum and gold. Technology is therefore not neutral. These resources are mined in conflict regions, assembled to electric circuits under harmful labour conditions and mostly ending up…

The Ideenbox (box of ideas) collects the problems of citizens and patients around the topic of health (such as physical and mental health issues, social consequences, care, health prevention...), for which solutions are to be developed with citizens, researchers and other stakeholders. Which health problem do you want research to solve?…

What is the project about? The crowdsourcing project "Letters 1920-1934" is about the transcription of the unique letter collection of the Vienna City Library from this period. In contrast to historical printed works, which are now subjected to automatic full-text recognition as standard, this is still not so easy to…

The Ragweed Finder was developed in 2017 by the Austrian Pollen Information Service at MedUni Vienna and has also been available to download as an app for Android and iOS since 2019. The Ragweed Finder consists of four components: Specimen report Ragweed distribution map Information about Ragweed Manual to recognize…

With your ideas towards a innovative social sector for all  Our society is facing numerous social challenges and the public administration, charities & social service providers, civil society and (social) enterprises are already working to solve them. In the face of increasingly complex challenges, there is a need for more…

SoilPlastic is a citizen science project that collects data on plastic in soils. No prior knowledge is needed to participate and you can enter your observations in the SoilPlastic app in just a few minutes. What is it about? Plastic products and their remains are ubiquitous. However, we still know…

The sale of electrical and electronic equipment is constantly increasing and accordingly e-waste has already become the fastest growing waste stream in the world. Our society needs to face this challenge without delay, so the Recycling Heroes project aims to raise awareness about e-waste, especially among students but also in…

CrowdWater is a hydrological citizen science project of the University of Zurich. CrowdWater uses an app to collect data about water. No prior knowledge is required to participate. What is the project about? CrowdWater stands for independent and reliable data collection by anyone with an interest in water. The observations collected…

Archaeological finds of textile remains give an insight into ancient weaving techniques, including fabrics from the Hallstatt salt mine dating from between 1500 and 300 BC, or finds of gold threads such as those from Ebreichsdorf in Lower Austria, ca. 1100 BC. They are scientifically analysed and reworked in the…

Annual counts This advanced citizen science project requires knowledge of the common native breeding bird species and participation over several years. Twice a year, the participants count all birds seen and heard at fixed points. The total of all counts is then used to calculate population trends. The available data…

Can tea help us understand climate change? Yes, but we need your help! We would like you to become our research partner and take part in one of the largest experiments on soil decomposition processes at the moment!

Austria is rich in a wide range of mineral deposits. Precise documentation of both “old” deposits (e.g. mining heaps and tunnels, slag heaps) and “new” location spots (e.g. quarries, natural outcrops, road cuts, etc.) is one of the focuses of the Department of Mineralogy and Petrography at the Natural History…

Citizen Science with a long tradition The first water bird counts in Austria took place as early as the 1950s. In the following years, the number of counts was gradually increased, and from 1970 onwards Austria-wide surveys have been carried out. This makes the waterbird census one of the longest…

With the Citizen Science Project "CITREE" a crowdsourcing instrument for monitoring the growth of urban trees, will be developed and used. It builds on the "Sparkling Science" project "Woody Woodpecker", which deals with the growth, structure and function of wood. Urban trees fulfill a variety of functions, such as improving…