Projects

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…

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…

State-of-the-art DNA technology and citizen science - "Frog in a drop of water" unleashes new prospects for amphibian research For the first time in Austria, amphibian screening using the detection of their DNA traces in water is being carried out - and everyone can take part. Amphibians (frogs, toads, salamanders…

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…

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…

Every observation counts! The City Nature Challenge (short: CNC) is an annual nature competition between regions that takes place in spring (usually at the end of April, beginning of May) and is held simultaneously in various cities and regions worldwide. On four consecutive days, people around the world document the…

What are Urban Heat Stories? It will get hotter and hotter in the city over the next few years. The impact of heat can vary greatly from neighborhood to neighborhood. It depends not only on the building density or the degree of sealing in the city, but also on the…

In order to find out how information about HPV needs to be prepared to reach the target groups, we are working together with parents, teachers and students in the project “Humane PapilloWAS?” to reveal what is known about HPV and which misinformation is circulating. Background Only 46% of the population…

Democratic Citizenship "Memories and Imaginaries" critically explores with students in Austria what it means to be a citizen. Who can or is allowed to actively participate in the political community? Who can or is not allowed to? We address these questions with the aim of finding collective strategies to confront…

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…

The Austrian Breeding Bird Atlas 2013-2018, published in 2024, is the most up-to-date and comprehensive source of information on the occurrence of breeding birds in Austria and changes in their distribution over the last few decades. What is the Breeding bird atlas? The breeding bird atlas presents the distribution of…

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…

The project Pilzdaten-Austria.eu aims at a comprehensive documentation of the occurrence and distribution of fungi in Austria, and to present and evaluate the available data. It is an Austria-wide cooperation of numerous mycologists, citizen scientists and institutions, which collect distribution data of fungi or hold collections of fungal specimens, coordinated…

Are swallows nesting at your house or in your stable? Have you seen a badger in the middle of town? Or do you regularly observe a kestrel in your garden? We are interested in your observations in rural settlement areas!

Wanted - Garden dormouse in Vorarlberg The garden dormouse, which is active at dusk and at night, has probably the most contrasting coat colouration among the small mammals in our latitudes. It prefers coniferous and mixed forests with rocky ground as its habitat. Little is known about its occurrence in…

Visitors of the Cumberland game park in Grünau im Amtal (Upper Austria) were invited to use an app to enter sightings and behavioural observations of greylag geese, common ravens and northern bald ibises and thus support research projects and the long-term monitoring of the Konrad Lorenz Research Center (KLF). Since…

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…

Music therapy from our perspectives “My Tune“ was a participatory research project in the field of music therapy (MT), which was carried out at the WZMF* and funded by the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft GmbH in the frame of the “Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement in Research 2021” call. From…

A project of the Viennese environmental protection department 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 Martin building a nest © Ferdinand…

The Austria-wide winter bird count Every year, the BirdLife bird protection organisation invites all of Austria to take part in the nationwide winter bird count. All nature lovers are invited to count birds for an hour over four days until 6 January. At the same time, participants can actively contribute…

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…

Citizen Mapping as a Practice of City-Making The project “City Layers: Citizen Mapping as a Practice of City-Making”, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) introduces a contemporary framework for city-mapping which centres on citizen experience of urban space as an integrative way to contribute to more egalitarian city design. Within the frame of the Citizen…

The research project Werkstatt Neu Leopoldau is focused on the settlement process as a workshop situation for social innovations in housing and urban development, with the aim of fostering sustainable development and creating good neighbourhoods. As an applied research project, "Werkstatt Neu Leopoldau" (Co-creation Neu Leopoldau) accompanies the settlement process…

The shrinking town of Eisenerz lies at the foot of the Erzberg mountain, Austria’s largest and best-known site of extraction of iron ore. The post-industrial town is experiencing a rural exodus, which concerns women in particular. The spatial practices of mining areas have been under-researched using inclusive methods. Mining is…

What is this project about? How can good people do bad things? How can people act contrary to their moral beliefs without having a bad conscience? White lies, rule bending, finding excuses for our own behaviour, which we would judge others for … To be honest, we have all done…

Youth and single parents doing urban research  About the project The climate crisis repeatedly exposes existing weaknesses in democratic practice. On the one hand, groups that are most affected by the consequences of climate change are often underrepresented in the prevailing political and planning practice (participation crisis). On the other…

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?…

ExploreAT! - exploring Austrias culture through the language glass The exploreAT! project aims to provide unique insights into the diversity of the German language (especially in Austria). With the help of innovative digital tools, a unique collection of Bavarian dialects in the region of the former Habsburg Monarchy (1911-1998) is…

Offers active beyond the duration of Zeit.shift The Zeit.shift project ended in June 2023. The central web offerings continue to be active beyond the project duration. Specifically, the results can be followed via the website. The newly generated web portal is accessible worldwide and the text material provided (several million…

What is the project about? The crowdsourcing project "Letters 1914-1919" 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 Pollen Diary was already launched as a scientific project in 2009. 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, Slovenia and Turkey. The number of users is growing every year, not…

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…

Counselling centres for women* are important institutions that have been founded since the 1980s by the second women's movement. In the project, researchers are conducting research together with counsellors and clients of Viennese women's* counselling centres. We are interested in the life stories of women* who seek help at counselling…

Flexibilisation of WF-mowing dates according to the phenological model  The ÖPUL-measure Nature Conservation results in farmers usually having an agreement on a fixed mowing date. Due to the ongoing climate change, vegetation development fluctuates more and more especially during spring and early summer. Therefore, it was proposed to expand the…

Overview You can tell by its name: The forest dormouse (Dryomys nitedula) is a characteristic species for deciduous and mixed forests. It belongs to the dormouse family and its survival is inextricably linked with forest habitats. The forest dormouse is protected throughout Europe, but data on its distribution is largely…

Compared to PolliDiversity, PolliDiversity 2.0. is still about creating habitats for insects, but the tasks of the citizen scientists have changed somewhat due to usability. The project was offered for the first time at the Citizen Science Award in 2021. In 2022, the second round took place in a modified…

Participatory exploration of the "Kremser scorpion” (Euscorpius tergestinus) with school students "Triestino scorpion" (Euscorpius tergestinus - still listed as E. carpathicus in the Red List of NÖ), which are threatened with extinction in Lower Austria, exists as an archaeozoon in Krems. This population is an isolated north-eastern outpost of the…

This project of the Austrian Alpine Association - a biodiversity monitoring above the timberline - increases our knowledge about alpine animal and plant species, their habitats and about the interrelationships of our actions and the effects on this sensitive living environment. The collected data on the 20 animal and plant…

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…

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…

Ural owl resettlement The resettlement of the Ural owl is led by a team of researchers headed by ornithologist Richard Zink at the Austrian Ornithological Centre – Seebarn branch office (Lower Austria) at "Vetmeduni" Vienna. The goal is the "Come Back" of the big owl into the forests of Austria.…

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…

You run or participate in a citizen science project? This project could also be listed on Österreich forscht. There are no costs involved. The professional or institutional background of a project is not important. The only requirement is a project description in German, and it must be possible to participate…

What is this project about? With Picture Pile you can contribute to solving global problems as climate chance and malnutrition by sorting piles of pictures together with other players. How can citizens participate in research? Sorting the pictures is very easy and works in a similar way to other Apps.…

“Explore the European landscape and help science to protect the climate and the environment!” Do you like to be out in the fresh air? Would you like to make a concrete contribution to protect the environment and the climate and earn something in addition? With the FotoQuestGo app, you can…

Reporting and collecting dead songbirds You find a dead songbird in your garden? Your cat brings home a dead bird? If you are in this situation, you can support a current research project of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. Avian malaria Within the framework of the Citizen-Science project "Avian…