Technologies & Approaches for Decentralized Water Quality Monitoring through Citizen Engagement.
Session ID#: 158916
Session Description:
Many citizens have a close relationship with their local water bodies, e.g. they use them for drinking water for themselves and their livestock, for crop irrigation, and for fishing as a source of food or recreation. Therefore, engaging citizens in monitoring their local water bodies can provide them with the knowledge and information to take an active role in preserving water quality at community level, and at national and regional level by providing additional data and information that can support policy and management (Thornhill et al., 2019).
Despite significant progress and increased prevalence of citizen science projects for water management, mixed results are still observed. A large question is whether data acquired via CS programs can be of substantial enough quality to serve different purposes from regulatory surveillance to operational decision-making. For CS to be useful, rigor as well as data-validation tools need to be incorporated. Elements of participant social identity (e.g., their motivation for participation), and contextual knowledge (e.g., of the research program itself) can shape participation and resulting data outcomes (Jollymore et al. 2017). As such, the success of the data collection is not solely dependent on the technology, but also on the recruiting strategy and program structure. The aim of the hereby proposed session is to explore technological and institutional success factors to guide the development of decentralized water quality monitoring programs that engage citizens.
Primary Convener: Jose Castro, University of Oxford, School of Geography & the Environment, Oxford, United Kingdom
Conveners: Jose Castro, University of Oxford, School of Geography & the Environment, Oxford, United Kingdom, Saskia Nowicki, University of Oxford, School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford, United Kingdom and Javier Mateo-Sagasta, International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Student/Early Career Convener: Jose Castro, University of Oxford, School of Geography & the Environment, Oxford, United Kingdom
Groundwater Quality of Downtown and Suburb Areas in Yangon, Myanmar and Future Challenges (1175388)
Chit Wityi Oo, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, United States, Melissa Lenczewski, Northern Illinois University, Department of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, DeKalb, IL, United States and Seinn Lei Aye, Yangon University, Environment and Water Studies, Yangon, Myanmar
