NIC and Te Kapehu Whetu School started in May 2018 an exciting community science project: monitoring the water and air quality along Hatea River from source to sea. Key reason the twenty 15yr girls from the Whare PATETAWHITI decided to do something is the fact that they cannot swim in the Hatea River in front of their TKP School anymore.
They girls put themselves to task to design a doable water and air quality monitoring process. Identify what parameters can/ should be measured. Find out what sensors could do the job. Source these sensors. Integrate these sensors cleverly that most of the data collection can be done remotely. Consolidate the data from TKP into strong root-cause evidence. Interpret the data and work out why, where, when the water and air quality is changing. Work out strategies what could be done to prevent, reverse these impacts.
In three months time the team will present to Whangarei’s Mayor Sheryl Mai and discuss their findings.
The project builds on global best practice from the Community Science charity in Syracuse, New York (USA), the Forschungs-Werkstatt, Kiel (Germany) and others.
Here is an overview presentation of the project. This is being updated regularly.
Northland Innovation Centre 