A vehicle for research: using street sweepers to explore the landscape of environmental community action

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. Author Keywords Air quality sensing, environmental science, environmental justice, mobile participatory sensing, street sweepers. ACM Classification Key...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Paul M. Aoki, R. J. Honicky, Alan M. Mainwaring, Chris Myers, Eric Paulos, Sushmita Subramanian, Allison Woodruff
• Keywords: CHI 2009, Environmental Action Researchers, Human Computer Interaction, Mobile Environmental Sensing, Mobile Participatory Sensing