In 2014, the Miistakis Institute hosted a Citizen Science Conference, exploring this diverse field with sessions on program design, evaluation, policy implications, technology and applications in parks and protected areas. This links to the website that chronicled that event.
Citizen Science and Community Based Air Monitoring Network through Micro Sensor Based Integrated Systems
Citizen science (CS) and community based monitoring (CBM) approaches provide opportunities for citizens and communities to contribute in environmental monitoring. In Alberta, implementation of CS and CBM can provide significant support to the government’s goals of accurately evaluating and reporting on the conditions of the environment.
Presently, a limited number of low footprint affordable systems exist for ambient monitoring of selective air parameters (e.g. particulate matters, temperature, relative humidity, etc.). These systems lack the accuracy and consistency in performance and a commonly acceptable quality assurance/control process does not exist. The systems offer vendor specific web portals for data observation, and do not meet existing design and performance specifications for integration into a provincial data warehouse.
Data security and transparency of these commonly used citizen science air-monitoring tools in general lack the trust and credibility for applications in environmental decision making.
In this poster, we demonstrate a micro sensor based air-monitoring system (micro station), developed under the Alberta Environment and Parks Innovation Fund Project, for citizen science and community based monitoring programs in the province.
The micro stations will allow monitoring of a number of air parameters through custom integration of off-the-shelve micro sensors on a shoebox-sized footprint. The micro stations are intended to be deployable with minimal logistical requirements. The systems would allow secure acquisition, transmission and archival of data to support environmental decision making. These micro sensor based integrated systems can provide a viable option for integration of environmental data from small communities to local, regional and provincial scale.
Speaker Bio: Quamrul Huda received his Ph.D. in silicon photonics from University of Manchester, U.K. under the Commonwealth Scholarship Award. He had his post-doctoral research in Nanoelectronics Research Institute, Japan. He worked as a Professor in Electrical & Electronic Engineering in Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology. He moved to Canada in 2009 and worked at University of Alberta as a Research Associate where he prototyped a small footprint integrated tunable laser for spectroscopic gas sensing. He joined Alberta Environment and Parks in 2013 and has been working on advanced air monitoring technologies.