What I want to do

I spoke with Carl from the EPA at the Engadget Expand conference last Saturday, and we brainstormed a table that could:

1. help people choose an environmental monitoring tool on the basis of cost, sensitivity, duration, complexity, etc
2. help the EPA and regulators understand the different kinds of monitoring being done by community groups

My attempt and results

See the table above; I put together this test in Google Spreadsheets; if we add to it and refine it, I'd like to run it on a wiki page:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_Ni9NOjZKiT6UwKLSd0DVPm0Crd9HXqkkXdWQEDWPX0/edit?usp=sharing

Questions and next steps

I took soil testing as a test case; added a couple Public Lab approaches as well as "photo narrative" which is where you just take lots of photos describing the situation -- an approach Carl said was very helpful to regulators -- and the UMASS Amherst soil lab tests. It's not fully filled out but feel free to add to it.

Why I'm interested

I'd like to situate each tool we develop in comparison to other options, to help us frame and design tools, and to help people frame questions and figure out how best to answer them.