Oblo

Update: Oblo beta was released in April 2022 with LICCION partner organisations. Each organisation is currently testing their version of the application via individualised domains and surveys. If your community or organisation is interested in using Oblo, please contact us.

Oblo is a free and open-source technology developed by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) allowing anyone to document and visualize geolocalised data on climate change impacts, knowledge and solutions. The first platform the LICCI research team built with Oblo is OpenTEK, a citizen science tool designed to encourage participation in climate research.

With Indigenous and civil society partners, LICCION has extended Oblo and developed distinct community-centered domains and surveys to not only facilitate the documentation of observations on local climate change impacts but also allow community-specific livelihoods, perspectives and protocols to be respected and integrated. The purpose of these new domains and surveys is to enable customary and community-led research and evidence-building on climate change while upholding Indigenous data sovereignty principles and values.

Features for local organisations or customary institutions:

• Survey development: Build comprehensive surveys on local climate change impacts with diverse question formats (e.g. text, number, multiple-choice, locations, images, etc.), based on local context and priorities.
• Languages & translation: Domains and surveys can be translated individually. This allows to collect data of one survey in multiple languages and at the same time allowing language-independent data analysis. Translations can be made directly in Oblo itself.
• Global roles: Assign editors and admins to administer data on respective domains/languages (e.g. reviewing entries that are labeled to require review because of incomplete data).
• Data access: Depending on privacy and access levels, view data directly in the application or generate reports in CSV format.

Technical documentation available at: https://oblo-cit-sci.github.io/

Features for users (e.g. community member or organisation staff):

• Basic: Add and geolocalise observations on climate change impacts, adaptation methods or traditional knowledge data, following a survey developed by your local organisation or customary institution.
• Offline: Enter information offline or in remote areas and upload later.
• Filter: Search filters for specific observations (i.e. by climatic zone). Entry tags also allow better filtering of entries based on their data.
• Languages: Create entries in English, French, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese, Nepali (more languages to come).
• Flexible privacy and license per entry: Define privacy level and license for each entry depending on sensitivity of data. For better stewardship of Indigenous data access, usage and sharing protocols, we are integrating the TK and BC Labels (next to Creative Common licenses).
• Data access: Depending on privacy and access levels, view data directly in the application or generate reports in CSV format.