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Busting corporate polluters with DIY tools

Global community of activists use low cost, open source technology to expose environmental violators.

An open box of a Public Lab balloon mapping kit. The kit costs $80 and includes a 1.7 metre balloon and 305 metres of cable for collecting aerial images. The balloon is filled with helium and attached to the cable before being steadily floated skyward. A small camera holder with a tiny camera is affixed to the cable and then floated up high enough to gather aerial shots of a location before being brought back to ground.
By Dan Boaden
Published On 20 Apr 2015

New Orleans, US – On April 20, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and began spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The well was eventually capped 87 days later. It was the worst offshore disaster of its kind in US history and the environmental effects of the oil spill continue to this day.

At the time of the disaster, a small group of mapping enthusiasts gathered on the Gulf coast to teach volunteers how to gather aerial images of the effects of the oil spill. The photographs were stitched together into maps, which were then used as an independent source of information at a time when a media blackout was being reported.

The success of this initiative gave birth to The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, or Public Lab, a dedicated online and offline global community supported by a non-profit, which focuses on the idea of civic science where citizens can use do-it-yourself tools to gather data about environmental concerns.

Public Lab’s open source principles have allowed their community to rapidly design, refine and implement easy-to-use, inexpensive tools made with modified, off-the-shelf technology.

Tapping into the knowledge of some of the leading academic institutions in the US, a community of developers can be found in Boston where they are developing tools to test water quality and detect pollutants such as oil.

What began as a small group of mapping enthusiasts, Public Lab’s community has grown to approximately 5,000 online active users and have developed several kits available for purchase. They are now offering air quality detectors, spectrometers and mapping kits to a global community. 

In the hands of citizens, these tools are being used to gather a huge range of environmental data; anything from canopy loss in Peru to industrial pollution in Spain.

New Orleans, a city that has been plagued by environmental disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill, has become an active community hotspot for some of Public Lab’s tools. The city struggles with pollution from the major oil and gas industries that are spread across Louisiana state.

Public Lab hosts regular community meetings and activity days, where those concerned about their environment can come and learn how to use some of the open source tools to gather data about pollution, which could be vital in holding companies to account.

It was whilst flying this kite that activist Scott Eustis captured low angle aerial photographs of a coal terminal polluting the Mississippi River. The images prompted Louisiana Department for Environmental Quality to conduct a site visit to the offending coal terminal company, United Bulk Terminals. In March 2014, a group of environmental organisations filed a suit against the coal export terminal for violating the federal Clean Water Act.
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In 2010 Jeff Warren started work designing a programme that could help stitch maps together for land tenure claims in Lima, Peru. Originally called “Cartagen Knitter”, the project evolved into the open source programme “MapKnitter”, which was used at the time of the BP oil spill to stitch large vector maps together.
A helium canister is used to inflate a five-foot balloon at a community education day held in New Orleans where visitors are taught the basics of balloon mapping and capturing aerial images with Public Lab's tools.
Don Blair, a Public Lab user, helps Rose Wang, an environmental engineer, build a simple photosensitive monitoring circuit. Wang attended a "jam" in Cambridge, Massachusetts where people were invited to come and learn about basic electronics and how to use new tools or applications for some of Public Lab's kits.
Don Blair solders components at Artisan's Asylum, a local hackspace in Somerville, Massachusetts in preparation for the evening's “water jam” event. Members of Artisan's Asylum are welcome to use the various machines and facilities for everything from sewing to fibre arts, to robotics and metal machining.
Two cameras have been modified to capture images synchronously. One shoots in normal RGB and color whilst the other has had the infrared filters removed and a piece of a film placed over the lens, which enables it to capture in near infrared – just beyond the visible light spectrum. This spectrum of light helps monitor plant health and can aid distinction between water and land.
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Jeff Warren holds up a desktop spectrometer. Inside the tool is a webcam that can capture the spectra of a particular sample. This is then uploaded to Spectral Workbench, an open source software designed by the Public Lab community that calibrates the image to map the intensity of particular light frequencies to help identify a sample. For example, it can detect the difference between crude oil and asphalt from the road.
Public Lab's New Orleans office is based at Propeller Incubator, a co-working space that promotes social and environmental companies.
Oil and gas is one of the leading industries in Louisiana with a large economic impact. However, from exploration to refining, the industry gives off large amounts of greenhouse gases and pollution.