Reviews
"Research area reviews" are periods of time when we work together to grow and organize shared knowledge on a particular environmental topic at Public Lab. Every three months, we cycle among the larger topics of air, water, land/soil, and organizing and advocacy. During that three month period, we pick a research area to focus on within the larger topic and collaboratively review it by asking and answering questions—what knowledge exists on Public Lab and beyond? What gaps are there? What accessible methods and tools can be used to research this topic? What next step challenges are there in tool development? What questions and projects are communities addressing? We do this together through calls and posts on PublicLab.org.
By the end of the review period, the goal is to have gathered and synthesized resources on the research area so that they are as current as possible and useful to members of the Public Lab community. People visiting the website will have an idea of how to get started with community science in the topic area, and will also know where to fill in gaps with specific skills, knowledge, and lived experiences.
Featured environmental topics on Public Lab are listed here. On a topic’s wiki page, you’ll find information on how to get started in research, tool development, and advocacy for that topic, and some next step challenges that remain. You’ll also find many ways to share your ideas, questions, and findings with the Public Lab community.
Visit the research area review tag page to see the latest review-related posts on Public Lab, and get updates on reviews by following the #research-area-review tag:
Current research area review
Stay tuned for details on our next research area review starting in February 2022, on a topic under land and soil.
If you’re interested in upcoming calls on other topics, check out the monthly calendar of planned community calls on water, land/soil, and organizing and advocacy led by Public Lab Research Curation Fellows.
Past research area review events and summaries
A key part of a research area review is getting together to talk and connect with each other on a topic and relevant tools! Below, you’ll find recordings from the most recent public events for a research area review, plus links to resources shared on the call and links to any summary posts.
December 13-17, 2021: Air Quality Data research area review
A summary of the latest research area review on air quality data is here, including a list of new data-related resources on the Public Lab website.
We wrapped up the review with a week of events on communicating air quality data.
Presentation & discussion on visualizing and communicating air quality data
We talked about some basic steps of communicating with air quality data, from understanding data better to cleaning and organizing data to data stories and visualizations. We also highlighted new activity posts and wikis on the Public Lab website covering these topics.
After the presentation, @fongvania led an open discussion on air quality monitoring and data. People on the call shared their local concerns with air quality as well as guidance on how to approach some of the challenges with community air monitoring.
Resources shared on the call:
- News from the Lower East Side: https://gothamist.com/news/city-demolition-east-river-park-underway-violation-court-order-protesters-say
- Public Lab resources on air quality data:
- Latest posts and questions: https://publiclab.org/tag/air-quality-data
- Collaborative wiki for background and resources: https://publiclab.org/wiki/air-quality-data
- Wiki page on cleaning and organizing data: https://publiclab.org/wiki/data-cleaning
- Data viz tools: https://publiclab.org/wiki/air-quality-data#Tools+for+making+visualizations+and+other+media
- The Data Viz Project: https://datavizproject.com/
- Air Tracker: https://edf.createlab.org/
- More information on Air Tracker: https://www.epa.gov/innovation/ej-video-challenge-students-tools-and-data-resources
- Baltimore Purple Air data: https://map.purpleair.com/1/mAQI/a10/p604800/cC0#10.57/39.3147/-76.5826
- Daily air quality reports: https://temboo.com/the-daily-breather
- Analysis of different air monitors: http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec/evaluations/summary-pm
- Sand Sentinel program around frac sand mining: https://publiclab.org/wiki/the-sand-sentinel-program
- AIRE collaborative made up of environmental justice groups in California: https://airecollaborative.org/
Guest speakers: Community scientists working with air quality data
Mary Jo Burke of LES Breathe and Christian Torres of Comite Civico del Valle each spoke about their community-led work building and running air monitoring projects.
Resources shared on the guest speaker call:
- LES Breathe homepage: https://eastriverparkaction.org/breathe/
- Guidebook for Developing a Community Air Monitoring Network: https://trackingcalifornia.org/cms/file/imperial-air-project/guidebook
Live build: Simple Air Sensor and data viz demo
Public Lab Research Curation Fellow @fongvania led us through a build and demo of the Simple Air Sensor and how we can use it to visualize air quality data.
You can find Simple Air Sensors in the Public Lab store here. Check out the instructions we follow in the build here, and more on reading data from the Simple Air Sensor here.
Resources shared during the live build:
- General information on Public Lab’s Simple Air Sensor: https://publiclab.org/wiki/simple-air-sensor
- Instructions we’re following for assembling the Simple Air Sensor: https://publiclab.org/notes/warren/03-19-2019/assembling-the-simple-air-sensor
- Plantower sensor specification sheet: https://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/aq-spec/resources-page/plantower-pms5003-manual_v2-3.pdf
- Ways to read or log data from the Simple Air Sensor: https://publiclab.org/tag/simple-air-sensor-data
- Software used in the data visualization demo: http://rawgraphs.io/
- Comparison of multiple free tools for data viz: https://publiclab.org/notes/fongvania/11-15-2021/comparing-data-visualization-tools
Research area review archive
Click here for a full archive of the research area reviews listed below, including video recordings and all links shared on the call.
September 29, 2021: Wastewater research area review
Click here to see this review in the archive
June 30, 2021: Mapping for organizing & advocacy research area review
Click here to see this review in the archive
March 31, 2021: Soil contamination research area review
Click here to see this review in the archive
December 16, 2020: Air quality research area review
Click here to see this review in the archive
September 23, 2020: Microplastics research area review
Click here to see this review in the archive
Who does research area reviews?
Anyone can help with a research area review! As the research coordinator at Public Lab, @bhamster organizes and runs a regular cycle of reviews to make sure we’re keeping our topic areas up-to-date. If you’re interested in helping out or offering ideas, please get in touch by leaving a comment on this post.
What happens during a review?
Currently, research area reviews involve:
- Choosing a topic to review.
- People with interest in or experience with the topic contributing and shaping the review by:
- Posting or answering questions
- Sharing knowledge in research notes
- Relating experiences and stories in conversations and community calls
- Documenting methods and tools and their uses
- Digging deeper into leads from conversations by gathering information and resources from beyond Public Lab.
- Organizing and synthesizing materials from Public Lab and beyond, covering methods and tool development; community stories and projects; relevant regulations, policy, and advocacy; next step challenges.
- Updating the topic’s wiki page and creating new wikis and research notes.
- Hosting an open online event to share highlights from the review, exchange stories and questions, and to welcome all to get involved with the topic whether they are newcomers or seasoned researchers.
- Writing up summaries of events and the review.
Another approach:
The review process outlined above built upon previous thinking on research area reviews (here and here), which can also be broken down into more distinct phases and distributed tasks in the following way:
Phase 1: Information Gathering
In Phase 1, the goal is to sift through and update all the existing resources on PublicLab.org related to a topic. This could include checking in on other projects' updates as well, and if there's been a previous review, that's also a great place to start.
Phase 2: Convening
Phase 2 involves hosting an Open Call to bring folks together, to go through the collected materials from Phase 1, identify gaps and plan next steps.
Phase 3: Synthesizing
In Phase 3, the notes from the call and the newly collected materials, shared goals, and tasks are organized and shared on PublicLab.org, tying the review together in a single post.
This table gives more details on the tasks and can serve as a template to organize the phases of a more distributed research area review:
| Phase | Task Type | Who can do this | Difficulty | Task | I'll do this! |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Garden | Anyone | Easy | Go through posts in the area and make sure they are properly tagged | LINK |
| 1 | Share | Anyone | Easy | Post questions on the topic area you have, or that you’re not able to find answers to on Public Lab. | LINK |
| 1 | Garden | One person | Medium | Make sure the wiki page has clear format | LINK |
| 1 | Research | Anyone | Hard | Help find answers to unanswered questions | LINK |
| 1 | Facilitate | Anyone | Hard | Invite, listen to, and record new stories related to the topic | LINK |
| 2 | Share | Anyone | Easy | Attend the open topic call and collaborate | LINK |
| 2 | Facilitate | One person | Medium | Host the public online meeting for group to collaborate to: Highlighting findings, ID gaps in available resources, highlight challenges in this research area | LINK |
| 3 | Synthesize | Anyone | Hard | Review existing material and call summary and write an update post on it with materials gathered | LINK |
| 3 | Research | One person | Hard | Follow up on gaps identified from the group and post materials to help support information around those gaps. | LINK |
Want to talk about a topic outside a research area review?
Anytime!
Join us for an Open Call, hosted every Tuesday at 12 pm PT / 3 pm ET. These informal calls are a great way to connect with Public Lab community members on projects, ideas, and questions. You can find more info on Open Call and how to join here.
Come to a call specifically on the topic of water, air, land/soil, or organizing and advocacy. These community calls are hosted throughout the year by Research Curation Fellows. Check here for a monthly calendar of planned calls.
And you can learn more about other kinds of Public Lab events and check out our events calendar here: publiclab.org/events