Crowdsourcing Data to Tackle Pollution

Kite-balloons and spectrometers - how community activists use DIY technology to investigate environmental polluters.

Exactly five years ago this month, an oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico leaking an estimated 134 million gallons of crude oil and four million pounds of natural gas into surrounding marine habitat. The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster as it was later known, was the largest oil spill of its kind, killing and injuring countless marine animals, shorebirds, sea turtles and other wildlife.
At the time of the oil spill, locals accused BP of 'information blackout' and were concerned that they were not able to document the true impact of the incident on their environment.
"People would come across residues on the beach or dead fish and animals," explains Jeff Warren who witnessed the aftermath of the oil spill. "So we were literally googling 'how do you identify (polluting) oil'," he adds.
In response, a small group of mapping enthusiasts got together and started using low-cost balloon and kites to take aerial images of the spill and also to test samples using DIY spectrometers. And so Public Lab was born.