Papers
Common Sense: Participatory Urban Sensing Using a Network of Handheld Air Quality Monitors
P. Dutta, P.M. Aoki, N. Kumar, A. Mainwaring, C. Myers, W. Willett, and A. Woodruff. Common Sense: Participatory Urban Sensing Using a Network of Handheld Air Quality Monitors (demonstration). Proc. SenSys 2009, Berkeley, CA, Nov. 2009, 349-350.
Poor air quality is a global health issue, causing serious problems like asthma, cancer, and heart disease around the world. Earlier this decade, the World Health Organization estimated that three million people die each year from the effects of air pollution. Unfortunately, while variations in air quality are significant, today's air quality monitors are very sparsely deployed. To address this visibility gap, the Common Sense project is developing participatory sensing systems that allow individuals to measure their personal exposure, groups to aggregate their members' exposure, and activists to mobilize grassroots community action. Download PDF
A Vehicle for Research: Using Street Sweepers to Explore the Landscape of Environmental Community Action
P.M. Aoki, R.J. Honicky, A. Mainwaring, C. Myers, E. Paulos, S. Subramanian, and A. Woodruff. A Vehicle for Research: Using Street Sweepers to Explore the Landscape of Environmental Community Action. Proc. CHI 2009, Boston, MA, Apr. 2009, 375-384. Best Paper Nominee.
Researchers are developing mobile sensing platforms to facilitate public awareness of environmental conditions. However, turning such awareness into practical community action and political change requires more than just collecting and presenting data. To inform research on mobile environmental sensing, we conducted design fieldwork with government, private, and public interest stakeholders. In parallel, we built an environmental air quality sensing system and deployed it on street sweeping vehicles in a major U.S. city; this served as a “research vehicle” by grounding our interviews and affording us status as environmental action researchers. In this paper, we present a qualitative analysis of the landscape of environmental action, focusing on insights that will help researchers frame meaningful technological interventions. Download PDF
Common Sense: Mobile Environmental Sensing Platforms to Support Community Action and Citizen Science
P.M. Aoki, R.J. Honicky, A. Mainwaring, C. Myers, E. Paulos, S. Subramanian, and A. Woodruff. Common Sense: Mobile Environmental Sensing Platforms to Support Community Action and Citizen Science (demonstration). Adjunct Proceedings Ubicomp 2008, Sep. 2008, 59-60.
The Common Sense project is developing mobile environmental sensing platforms to support grassroots community action. To this end, we are building a family of hardware and software components that can be used in a range of applications, as well as developing new communication paradigms that enable communities of non- experts to gather and produce information that is “credible enough” for experts and policy-makers. The demonstration showcases one such platform, currently deployed on street-sweeping vehicles in a major U.S. city. Download PDF