Crowd Data Sourcing and Wireless Sensor Networks
Crowdsourcing may sound like something you’re not familiar with, however I’m sure you all heard of this kind of service. In crowdsourcing millions of devices are used to obtain and share featured services. A simple example of such a service is the 4040 sms number of VTM, where each citizen can offer news to the television company, which in turn can decide to broadcast it or not. But why should crowdsourcing be limited to human input?
After the earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011, people had few or no tools to measure local radiation levels themselves. Developers at Libelium (the manufacturer of the hardware we use for our thesis) realized this and quickly responded to it by producing a low cost radiation sensor shield. The idea is simple; each node measures the number of counts per minute detected by the installed Geiger tube and sends this value via ZigBee or GPRS to the control point.
A bunch of boards were shipped freely to Japan to give citizens the opportunity to monitor radiation levels themselves instead of having to rely on the local authorities and avoiding another disaster like the Chernobyl cover-up by the former Soviet union. With the Radiation Sensor Boards people in Japan will be able to measure levels of radiation in their everyday life after the Fukushima disaster. This Radiation Sensor Board is fully compatible with the hardware we use so eventually we could also measure radiation levels at Group T.
Also the backbone structure of the initial network is comparable with our design for the Group T campus. The prevention and control radiation WSN at Fukushima consists of several dozens of sensor devices, deployed in the surroundings of the nuclear power plant and even reaching the closest cities. Each node takes the value of its Geiger tube and is sent to the gateway using the ZigBee radio on the Waspmote. Then the gateway stores the information in an Internet database.
Thanks to crowd data sharing the governments are no longer the only source of information of radiation levels around a nuclear plant. Libelium sensor boards can be equipped with a Wifi module, establishing a global sensor network for collecting and sharing radiation measurements, which could be displayed as datapoints on a Google map.
Crowdsourcing and crowd data sharing show how individual devices or publicly open parts of wireless sensor networks can be used to create a better and safer world.
Source:
Wireless Sensor Networks to Control Radiation Levels – April 19th, 2011 - David Gascón, Marcos Yarza – http://www.libelium.com/wireless_sensor_networks_to_control_radiation_levels_geiger_counters/
Detecting Radiation Levels in Fukushima: an example of crowdsourcing - February 22nd, 2013 - Alberto Bielsa – http://www.libelium.com/fukushima_crowdsourcing_radiation_social_project/
There are also other ways of doing crows sourcing. I’ve heard of apps on smartphones and tablets that do crowdsourcing in the form of a game. You have objectives in the game and have to take photos of certain locations or go to certain places (they can find new routers this way). The game aspect is that you then capture points and get weapons and need to try and conquer the world or something.
I couldn’t find the link anymore but here is a list of crowdsource applications:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crowdsourcing_projects
WIth only the tube (like in the picture) on the Waspmote and with the right programming we can detect the radiation level in GroupT? How many should we use to get a accurate reading? Or is just one enough for the entire building?
Can this device be used to warn people that live further away from the radiation ? Are the devices connected with each other, so if one device measures a large radiation the other devices wil warn all the other devices.
@thierry: As you know there are different types of radiation. Gamma radiation goes trough a lot of materials since it is an electromagnetic wave and can be detected more easily. Alpha radiation consist out of small particle. This means an alpha particle won’t even go trough a piece of paper. I don’t know if these tubes also can detect alpha radiation but in order to do so it must make direct contact. If you ingest an alpha particle they are very dangerous. Since these particles can only enter trough openings like windows, door and ventilation, these are the places to put the sensors. If you put enough sensors to detect alpha particles then you will probably have enough sensors to detect all other types of radiation as well. Alpha particles however are not easy detected by all sensors. This sensor board does not detect them. In the article is also mentioned that unless ingested, alpha particles don’t form a serious hazard.
@Glenn: Since we are talking about a network these devices will send their information to a central place. Maybe using other zigbee devices are routers, but this could also be done using a 3G network or any other mean of communication. The waspmote devices forming a network is illustrated in the last figure in Bjorn’s post. The green dot is a gateway. So all information tries to find its way to the gateway. The gateway is often connected to the internet and allows for other people to see what has been measured.
For our thesis we are making such a network and programming a gateway. A colleague is designing a website that presents all this data in a more structured way, easy for people to visit.
A second option can be found in the article: http://www.libelium.com/wireless_sensor_networks_to_control_radiation_levels_geiger_counters/
Under the name of ‘Emergency Radiation Sensor Network’ you see that all nodes have build in GPRS or can send SMS alarms. Whenever a critical value is reached these nodes will send out an alarm. In this system nodes can be anywhere since GPRS is present almost anywhere. But GPRS is more expensive since you need to pay for data traffic and also the hardware costs a little more. If you don’t have a dense coverage of nodes then this kind of network might be preferred. Of course also a combination of both network types is possible.
I hope to have informed you enough. If you are having further questions please let us know.
By the way there is a lot of information in the article as well. So be sure to check it out.