Water?
Initial project proposal by Rebecca Cook & Lorraine Liao for the Columbia GSAPP course Urban Informatics II: Sensing and Urban Spaces.
The Bronx River has undergone a massive wave of ecological restoration over the past couple of years. Efforts for cleanup and monitoring of water quality were in large parts thanks to the Bronx River Alliance. The successful outcome includes a newly imagined Water Trail project by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation which aims to connect 160 miles of rivers, bays, creeks, inlets, and ocean interwoven throughout all five boroughs of NYC. The water trail would act as a new form of “highway” where recreation meets environmental expedition and various forms of open water rowing craft would transport visitors along the trail. Among the 10 launch sites where visitors can rent, launch, and park their rowing craft is a dock located in Starlight Park, Bronx.
Given the precedent works of the Bronx River Alliance and their Project Water DROP (Detecting River Outfalls and Pollutants), the issues of water quality in the Bronx River has been brought into forefronts for discussions about recreational activity on the water way. The project found that there was an outpouring of Enterococcus into the Bronx River and if individuals come into contact with the contaminated water, potential illness and threat to public health would arise.
Using sensors as a low-cost monitoring system, our project is interested in sensing as a service for everyday users of the park. In particular, we hope that the sensors could be designed to alert pedestrians or park visitors on the water quality conditions of the Bronx River and inform them when Combined Sewer Overflow (CSOs) might be happening in the waterway closest to them.
On a speculative note, the projects has the hopes of transferring the information from the water quality sensor to alert pedestrians through natural sounds (i.e. cricket’s chirping) and seemingly blend into the environment when threats are low. The sound’s volume could increase with danger levels based on the water quality sensor. Since this project aims to create a low-fi prototype, we will focus on the water quality sensor and its transfer of information onto a well-designed sound amplifier.
The water quality sensor we are interested in looking at would measure the TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) which could inform how many milligrams of soluble solids dissolved in one liter of water. The higher the TDS value, the more soluble solids dissolved in water there is giving us a less clean and more hazardous water quality.
Desired Outcomes:
We hope our project can help us address the following questions:
- How are the current water conditions of the Bronx River given recent cleaning and restoration projects lead by the Bronx River Alliance?
- How does the water quality change over the time of the day?
- Where are potential locations to deploy the sensor and informative sound board for pedestrians and park users?
Impetus for Research:
While there have been milestone efforts in the restoration of the park’s environment, concerns for environmental justice still stands today. These contentions trace back to the history of Starlight Park. As it currently located alongside the Sheridan Expressway, the community served by the park has faced a history of neglect and environmental burden where open space and recreation was compromised for the construction of the expressway in the 1950’s under Robert Moses’s plan to extend the highways of New York City into the New England Thruway.
We hope this project would enhance the experience of the park and its waterfront access while advocating for environmental justice in the community.
