Fires cause over 300,000 deaths annually worldwide and leave millions more with permanent injuries: some 95% of these deaths are in low- and middle-income countries. Burn injury risk is strongly associated with low-income and informal (or slum) settlements, which are growing rapidly in an urbanising world. Fire policy and mitigation strategies in poorer countries are constrained by inadequate data on incidence, impacts, and causes, which is mainly due to a lack of capacity and resources for data collection, analysis, and modelling. As a first step towards overcoming such challenges, this project reviewed the literature on the subject to assess the potential of a range of methods and tools for identifying, assessing, and addressing fire risk in low-income and informal settlements; the process was supported by an expert workshop at University College London in May 2016. We suggest that community-based risk and vulnerability assessment methods, which are widely used in disaster risk reduction, could be adapted to urban fire risk assessment, and could be enhanced by advances in crowdsourcing and citizen science for geospatial data creation and collection. To assist urban planners, emergency managers, and community organisations who are working in resource-constrained settings to identify and assess relevant fire risk factors, we also suggest an improved analytical framework based on the Haddon Matrix.

Although hundreds of citizen science applications exist, there is lack of detailed analysis of volunteers' needs and requirements, common usability mistakes and the kinds of user experiences that citizen science applications generate. Due to the limited number of studies that reflect on these issues, it is not always possible to develop interactions that are beneficial and enjoyable. In this paper we perform a systematic literature review to identify relevant articles which discuss user issues in environmental digital citizen science and we develop a set of design guidelines, which we evaluate using cooperative evaluation. The proposed research can assist scientists and practitioners with the design and development of easy to use citizen science applications and sets the basis to inform future Human-Computer Interaction research in the context of citizen science.

Since the introduction of Xerox PARC Map Viewer, there is a high growth in the number of Web GIS (Geographical Information System) applications for public use in different contexts. These applications instruct, advise and provide the tools for spatial analysis to their users, and the people who use them depend or rely on these systems. Many of these users are non-experts who have no GIS expertise and a limited understanding of spatial data handling. These inherent characteristics of non-expert interaction establish risk and uncertainty, which are further increased due to the complexity of Web GIS interfaces. These issues of uncertainty, risk perception and dependence are all trust-related aspects. Online trust has been repeatedly identified as a major concept for online information systems and its value recognised as it influences the intentions to use and the acceptance of online systems and the overall user experience. However, there is a very limited understanding as to exactly how trust is constructed when people, especially non-experts, interact with Web GIS. To improve knowledge in this domain, this article explores the theoretical foundations on how trust can be investigated in this context. Trust studies (mainly from the e-commerce domain) suggest that a trust-oriented interface design may improve the trustworthiness of online systems, and such attention can be given to Web GIS interfaces. Such studies are reviewed and their applicability is considered in the Web GIS context, taking into consideration their special characteristics. A case study is used to discuss how some features may potentially influence the trustworthiness of Web GIS applications. This article concludes by suggesting future research directions for the implementation of a holistic approach, which is necessary to investigate trust in this context.

The growing interest in citizen science has resulted in a new range of digital tools that facilitate the interaction and communications between citizens and scientists. Considering the ever increasing number of applications that currently exist, it is surprising how little we know about how volunteers interact with these technologies, what they expect from them, and why these technologies succeed or fail. Aiming to address this gap, JCOM organized this special issue on the role of User Experience (UX) of digital technologies in citizen science which is the first to focus on the qualities and impacts of interface and user design within citizen science. Seven papers are included that highlight three key aspects of user-focused research and methodological approaches. In the first category, "design standards", the authors explore the applicability of existing standards, build and evaluate a set of guidelines to improve interactions with citizen science applications. In the second, "design methods", methodological approaches for getting user feedback, analysing user behaviour and exploring different interface designs modes are explored. Finally, "user experience in the physical and digital world" explores crossovers with other fields to improve our understanding of user experiences and demonstrate how design choices not only influence digital interactions but also shape interactions with the wider world.