Where next for citizen science? Innovative uses for crowd sourcing

Thanks to new technologies , citizen science has seen huge growth over the past decade, opening up important scientific research to the masses and harnessing the power of the crowd. Ranging from classifying new galaxies to monitoring wildlife in the Serengeti, the Zooniverse stable of citizen science projects led by Dr Chris Lintott has seen incredible success. But what does the future hold for citizen science – does it have the power to help in real life situations such as disaster zones? And what are the implications when dealing with huge amounts of potentially sensitive data in real time?