Community-led Environmental Sensing: Data Collection and Its Discontent

• In Event: Citizen Science I: Co-Constructing Citizen Science

Abstract

Community-led environmental data collection, although encouraged under the guise of citizen science, is often considered suspect when these efforts are to support claims that poor air quality is making residents sick. Furthermore, citizen science is assumed to empower and mobilize community members around environmental justice issues, even though they have had negligible success in influencing expert opinion and decision-making in ameliorating their situation. A review of case studies of the last several decades reveals that, despite this record, communities who engage in citizen science and data collection (often in partnership with non-profit organizations and their expert advisors) present a challenge to regulatory standards that exclude local knowledge in the interpretation of that data, pushing standards and standardized practice to the foreground of debate. This paper begins by tracing the history of air quality data collection by local people and the various low-cost sensing methods used by fence-line communities and where they have succeeded or failed to achieve their desired goals.

Building upon this history, the author/artist initiated a community project to build a fleet of rovers made with low-cost electronic components and air quality monitoring sensors mounted on toy trucks and wearables with youth living in Ezra Prentice Homes, an environmental justice community in South End Albany, New York. Using citizen science and critical making as a methodology, the project has an unconventional goal: as a form of radical pedagogy and tactical intervention, the making and deploying of the devices during publicized events and alongside the New York State DEC's expert monitoring, the aim is to keep pressure on the agency to fulfill their promise of the year-long comprehensive study of air quality in the neighborhood. Recognizing the limitations of low-cost sensors, the objective of our citizen science practice is not to attempt to match data accuracy of the agency's high end monitors (although a web platform will present the data collected), but as a provocation for State accountability and deepened learning about the complex relationship between governance, corporate neighbors, and public health.

Author

• Maria Michails, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute