Safecast
What is Safecast?
Safecast is an open-data network that records, analyzes and distributes tens of thousands of data points about nuclear fallout and other pollutants related to the post-tsunami nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, in March 2011. Safecast is an ongoing volunteer-based research project that uses social media and online communication networks, as well as open-source makerspaces that assemble the sensors, to engage volunteers with great technical expertise, and citizens with a motivation to do good in data collection efforts. The monitoring devices (bGeigie Nano, geiger counters) are available for volunteers to analyze and assess the nuclear fallout in their homes, and they were attached to cars and used to record data of larger areas.
OPEN ENVIRONMENTAL DATA FOR EVERYONE
Safecast is a global volunteer-centered citizen science project working to empower people with data about their environments. We believe that having more freely available open data is better for everyone. Everything we do is aimed at putting data and data collection know-how in the hands of people worldwide. — Safecast Website
How does Safecast operate?
The founder of Safecast, Joi Ito, was able to build a network of specialists and makers through the internet within only one week. He identified the inventor of the Three Mile Island Monitoring System, data visualization specialists from IDEO, young technology enthusiasts in various makerspaces invested in open-source data, as core components to the creation of this mobile data collection system. Eventually, volunteers who owned cars, were given the bGeigie Nano sensors to start the radiation measurements, generating what by May 2013 were already almost 10 Million data points that were accessible online through a website, social media, and a smartphone app.
In comparison to efforts that the japanese government did to collect similar data, which cost them billions of dollars and only led to the collection of about 20,000 data points until, eventually, the program was shut down, Safecast was able to leverage the internet as communication tool for fast network research and building, leverage open-source makerspaces to develop and produce geiger counters, and leverage hyperlocal engagement of community members to execute the fieldwork for their research on a huge territorial scale to accumulate massive amounts of quantifiable data in a very short amount of time.
The fact that government efforts vs. social / online network efforts differ so much in their success, scale and impact, illustrates an inertia of the establishment, that is majorly defined by financial risks. The risk of failed investment when it comes to large amounts of money for the government leads to citizens losing credibility and trust. Safecast’s strategy includes shared responsibility on an individual citizen’s level, as well as a highly fragmented, minimal financial risk for those who produce the sensors. This project started with the intent to crowd-source information, to penetrate the local communities, and to scale rapidly, which limited the risk of false investments. On the other hand, the Japanese government put together an initiative that needed to fully plan, strategize, prepare and predict the research that was to be conducted, which cost tremendous amount of time to set up, and tremendous amount of money to execute–and they failed.
The Top-Down / Bottom-Up Spectrometer
Is Safecast a bottom-up approach? It is definitely not a traditional top-down like the failed efforts done by the Japanese Government. We might understand the distributed production and usage of the geiger counters within various, heterogenous parts of society (from academic to technology specialist and affected citizens), as a successful implementation of bottom-up strategies. The focus on citizen engagement and the ability to build on existing distributed, and open source, technical skills and resources, disseminate labour, financial risks, the risk of failure and the generation of new nuclear risk knowledge across all levels of society. One important fact that we cannot lose out of sight though, is the fact that the initiator of the project, Joi Ito, is one of the most influential, wealthy and experienced specialists in technology and business investments. With a person of his rate of influence reaching out to specialists in the various fields involved in this project (sensor technology, data analysis, data collection, production, participatory research and design, mobile systems), it is no question that there is a wide willingness to cooperate and collaborate to make a project happen that–intentionally or not–might prove to be more successful than the government’s efforts. Joi Ito and his team can be categorized as knowledge diffusers and interpreters of demands, placing this project in the middle-up-down section of innovation.
With its lasting impact and its global scalability, Safecast was initiated by a business and science mogul, disseminated through a team of specialists into wider networks of technology enthusiasts and eventually into the “citizen public”. In return, the success of Safecast had an impact on the governmental side as well, since new educational programs, scientific advances, and policy developments can be made drawing from the open data provided by Safecast.
The long term impact of Safecast can be measured and demonstrated by many different aspects: continuing community engagement, fast crowd-sourcing of huge amounts of relevant quantifiable data, analysis of disaster consequences, resilience for future disasters, and the establishing of nuclear risk knowledge production systems on a global scope.
Practices, Methods, Approaches
The various strategies and means chosen to tackle the challenges and reach the objectives of the project include
(1) interdisciplinary and international collaboration between scientists, academics, tech-specialists, makers, and citizens;
(2) leveraging the internet and social media as a starting point to quickly organize a team of specialists and mobilize effective participation among large groups of the affected society;
(3) an approach to a topic through new, unconventional lenses: It’s in the power of citizens to create data that might shift policies and behaviors rather than in the hands of the government;
(4) a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter and other platforms not only to fund the project, but to also share knowledge about the project and the issues at hand.
Pressures
There is no doubt that the success of Safecast was heavily shaped by a sequence of pressures affecting a large portion of the Japanese society:
(1) The natural and nuclear disasters leading to an unprecedented nuclear fallout spreading in-lands, along the coastline and into the ocean.
(2) The need for immediate disaster relief that surpasses the capacities of existing governmental initiatives.
(3) The government’s unsuccessful attempt to collect and generate data with a traditional top-down approach, leading to frustration and skepticism among the most affected populations.
(4) The very timely concept of Safecast to incorporate small-scale local maker-labs and their networks, as well as the affected population’s need for quick, low-cost, DIY solutions.
(5) Transcontinental / international / global impact of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
(6) The global need to learn more about nuclear fallout and its diffusion through land, air, and water, in order to create new disaster prevention and control strategies.
(7) Raising protest against nuclear power at large, with growing numbers of people pressuring their governments to opt out and shut down nuclear power plants (e.g. Germany).
From Data to Decision-Making
As it seems, Safecast is an innovation that quickly diffused amongst large numbers of people in Japan that were directly hit by the earthquake and the following nuclear accident in March 2011. The geiger counter attached to private cars is simple enough to enable easy participation in this citizen science project and since the geiger counters collect and report data automatically, there was no harsh and complicated protocol to follow for the users, and very limited risk for the collected data to be scientifically compromised. Seeing the success of this innovation very quickly in Japan, where the government efforts to generate similar data cost billions of tax money and were not slightly as successful, the Japanese government had no other choice but rely on the Safecast data.
From here on, international communities became interested in the usage and diffusion of Safecast to improve the data collection on radioactive outfall and radiation on a global scale. At this point, with more and more technology-savvy people in the world, and a growing number of makerspaces in many countries, Safecast has proven to be a feasible, timely, powerful innovation that bridged the gap between citizens and government.
