Community water quality monitoring
These projects explore how participatory approaches to creating and displaying environmental data can be part of creating positive change around local water quality issues.
SeeBoat is a fleet of remote controlled boats that communities and researchers can use together to measure and display water quality. The boats measure water temperature, conductivity, and turbidity and displays the data by changing color on site and in real time. These outcomes can be captured through long exposure photography and numeric sensor data is also logged on the devices. Learn more here.
More recent work focuses on developing engaging and intuitive ways for communities to capture data on road-salt impacted streams in Maine. These systems aim to engage broader communities with local environmental issues, support advocacy efforts, and provide dense data that can inform more in-depth water quality monitoring. The results of this community-based design effort will inform the development of future computational tools for visualization that center local approaches to sustainable decision making.
