Towards a societal scale environmental sensing network with public participation

Abstract

Information acquisition is the prerequisite for environmental management, while insufficient information caused by sparse monitoring stations would result in improper management. Increasingly widespread distribution of consumer electronics equipped with various sensors can enhance the ability to gather and share data. In this study, a Collaborative Environmental Sensing Network (CESN) pattern is proposed, and its structure is clearly described. A Public Participation for Environmental Noise Monitoring (PPENM) project was conducted to illustrate the efficiency of this pattern, and PPENM implementation and the temporal-spatial properties of participators were analyzed. Results show that participators increased rapidly, reaching 32,140 in less than 14 months. The number of records shared by participants from cities all over China reached 531,608, and the participators were most active in the developed cities (e.g., Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou), the most distributed from 8 AM to 11 PM. Based on these results, we conclude that CESN can be formed during a short time and provide a cost-effective alternative approach to collect data at large scales, but that data credibility, privacy, and incentive mechanisms will be the major challenges. †Co-first author.