Community-Led Sustainability

Motivation:

The world's water resources are in crisis due to human activities and global warming. While federal and state governments have entities tasked with regularly monitoring and managing the country's water resources, their efforts are not sufficient. Currently, around 70% of streams in the United States remain unassessed. This lack of data means we cannot determine the health of approximately 70% of water sources, which can be detrimental to both human consumption and aquatic life.

Community-Led Environmental Monitoring:

There are thousands of community-led volunteer groups across the United States that monitor the quality of their local water resources to track and safeguard their community's water. These groups often comprise volunteers who lack professional backgrounds in water sciences, yet they frequently learn how to monitor water quality independently or collaborate with local scientists to do so.

The involvement of citizens from a community in stream-based data collection is commendable. Not only does it supplement government data and monitoring activities, thereby addressing the lack of assessment for 70% of streams, but it also fosters highly engaged and scientifically literate communities. Previous research has also shown that greater community based activity has been associated with greater water quality in a given watershed. I conducted a series of user studies to understand this practice better and identify ways technology can help amplify it.

Study 1 - Discovery:

Overview - Understanding community watershed as a socio-technical system and early design explorations through participatory design hackathons.

Method - 

1. 15 semi-structured interviews

2. Field Observations with one group

3. 7 Design Hackathons

Key Findings -

1. This system is hyperlocal citizen science that facilitates public participation in science

2. Citizen-based water quality monitoring can be a considered a new form of community engagement

3. The monitoring activity keeps the participating citizens physically and emotionally healthy

4. Role of data and collaboration in sustainability of this community of practice

5. A comprehensive technical infrastructure to support citizen science initiatives

Study 2 - System Design and Evaluation:

Overview - Collaborated with ‘The Commons’ to aid the design and evaluation of “Water Data Collaborative” (WDC), an online national networked online community for water quality monitoring stakeholders.

Method - 5 Participatory design sessions using scenario-based design

Findings -

1. Regional collaborations are a priority 

2. Integrating varied datasets, coordination and communication among stakeholders, set expectations between bench and cs

3. Government and CS collaboration goals and challenges - data quality, miscommunication

4. Feedback on WDC

   1. Leverage resources from the broader network

   2. break down hierarchical barriers between different data sources 

   3. Design for different levels of collaboration 

   4. central hub or database of monitoring programs across the country

   5. Standardization of study design