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 -
15 semi-structured interviews
Field Observations with one group
7 Design Hackathons
Key Findings -
This system is hyperlocal citizen science that facilitates public participation in science
Citizen-based water quality monitoring can be a considered a new form of community engagement
The monitoring activity keeps the participating citizens physically and emotionally healthy
Role of data and collaboration in sustainability of this community of practice
A comprehensive technical infrastructure to support citizen science initiatives
Stakeholder Network Diagram
A mock-up of a water data platform to represent data collected by the water groups
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 -
Regional collaborations are a priority
Integrating varied datasets, coordination and communication among stakeholders, set expectations between bench and cs
Government and CS collaboration goals and challenges - data quality, miscommunication
Feedback on WDC
Leverage resources from the broader network
break down hierarchical barriers between different data sources
Design for different levels of collaboration
central hub or database of monitoring programs across the country
Standardization of study design