This STS Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant will fund research to examine the tension between the drive toward bigger and more complex environmental information systems and local needs for knowledge about polluting industries. Computing technologies have enabled the development of big-data systems to analyze natural and built environments; whereas, non-scientists are increasingly involved in gathering evidence of pollution in their local communities. Thus, while lay citizens seek local empowerment through participatory environmental science, their contributions to data gathering efforts serve to amplify the importance of big data in making scientific knowledge claims.
Intellectual Merit
The research is a study volunteer water monitoring groups that respond to pollution threats from natural gas extraction in New York and Pennsylvania. The study will follow five capacity building organizations that play an important role in developing volunteer monitoring protocols, aggregating data, and determining how data will be used in public data portals. The study addresses several issues, such as explaining the diversity of monitoring practices, data aggregating strategies, and data sharing practices that are used by capacity building organizations, and explaining the difficulties water monitoring communities have faced in creating a standard, shared, water-quality database. To answer these questions, the research uses mixed-methods including qualitative interviews with members of multiple stakeholder groups, and participant observation of strategy sessions held between capacity building organizations. The study will contributes to STS literature on citizen science and a growing body of research on big-data informatics.
Broader Impacts
The results of this research will have potential to impact technical practices and information management strategies of civil society groups. It will make significant contributions to volunteer water-monitoring communities by contributing knowledge to capacity building organizations, volunteer groups, and other stakeholder groups that participate in the study. The study will also inform the practices of regulators and research scientists who are seeking effective ways to interact with new information systems that are coming online to support citizen science groups.
