You can now help your city track creek health and identify areas of concern by using your iPhone as a clean water monitor with Creek Watch, a new app developed by IBM researchers and featured on People for a Smarter Planet.
Got an iPhone? Download Creek Watch now!
Think about how many times you walk, bike or even drive past a creek or stream in your city. Some of us have a favorite creekside trail we jog on the weekends. Many of us drive over a bridge every day on the way to work. These creeks and streams are sometimes sometimes full, sometimes dry and many times littered with trash. With so many waterways in one city, sometimes flowing through private property, it’s hard for one team of officials to appropriately monitor them. With IBM’s Creek Watch iPhone app, members of the community can easily become ‘citizen scientists,’ and in 4 easy steps, make a difference: snap a photo, and select the water level, the water flow and the amount of trash nearby. The app provides three easy buttons to choose from as indicators, and even gives you explanations of each.
IBM computer scientists live for big data problems. Creek Watch provides a great opportunity to apply decades of data and analytics expertise to positively impact the environment. “Creek Watch lets the average citizen contribute to the health of their water supply – without PhDs, chemistry kits and a lot of time,” said Christine Robson, IBM Research. “Harnessing the crowdsourced data movement for a cause people care about is a win-win-win for citizens, water quality programs and IBM’s desire to solve big data challenges.”
“We need many eyes on our creeks to help us track their health,” said biologist Carol Boland of San Jose’s Watershed Protection Division. “We’re thrilled that IBM has provided an easy tool that engages citizens in contributing to a database on creek health.”
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Creek Watch is an excellent example of what People for a Smarter Planet (P4SP) is all about. People for a Smarter Planet offers a dynamic and intelligent network of activities, conversations and discussions you can participate in to help build a sustainable and smarter world. Or, if you just want to hang around and listen, that’s okay too. And if you have a project you think we should feature on P4SP, let us know.
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