There's a sensor in your pocket

Mobile technologies enable a new generation of citizen scientists

Cell phones and other mobile technologies enable a world where people can participate in sensing and analyzing aspects of their lives that were previously invisible. "Participatory Sensing" allows individuals to identify, measure, and address problems as diverse as air pollution or the damage to fragile ecosystems using mobile phones with basic sensing and communication systems like cameras, global positioning systems (GPS), and text messaging.

A new paper, "Participatory Sensing: A Citizen-powered Approach to Illuminating the Patterns that Shape our World," commissioned by the Foresight & Governance Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, outlines how existing technologies in today's mobile phones and web services enable new approaches to citizen science. The paper presents scenarios for how these techniques might improve environmental protection and personal healthcare. The fact that millions of people already have mobile phones makes this data-gathering platform powerful and widely accessible. "Participatory Sensing" was prepared by scientists and engineers at the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Download the full paper (pdf): http://wilsoncenter.org/topics/docs/participatory_sensing.pdf

"The mobile infrastructure has already transformed communication and commerce," said CENS Director Deborah Estrin. "We envision a paradigm that uses the same technologies to empower individuals and groups to learn about themselves and shape the world around them in unprecedented ways."

Uses for Participatory Sensing can include: