Safecast is a global sensor network for collecting and sharing radiation measurements to empower people with data about their environments.

azby

Internews highlights the work of Safecast

March 7, 2013 19:20 March 7, 2013 19:20 March 7, 2013 19:20
 

Internews, an international non-profit formed in 1982 with a mission to empower local media worldwide, has been doing important and groundbreaking work in areas such as medial law and policy, expanding access to information, and delivering innovative media solutions. The organization trains media professionals and citizen journalists, hoping to increase coverage of vital issues such as conflict management, environment and health, women and young people’s issues, and to help advance policies for open access to information. We admire them and their work, and think we’re motivated by similar concerns.

That’s why we’re pleased to learn that Internews has highlighted the work of Safecast in an important new 53-page report, “Connecting the Last Mile: The role of communications in the Great East Japan Earthquake,” authored by Lois Appleby, who was a first responder after 3/11 with CARE International. The report was supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

INTERNEWS website

Direct link to report

The report points out the good work that has been done by many other groups and individuals, and levels warranted criticism at the numerous failings of established media sources after the start of the disaster. It’s very forward-looking and positive overall, though, and very well-written. We couldn’t help but notice that the founding of Safecast made it into their timeline of key post-3/11 media developments!

We’re all the more pleased because we didn’t have any contact with Internews before the report came out, and they included us without our knowing it. We really didn’t see this one coming!

  • March 7, 2013 19:20
  • Posted by azby on March 7, 2013 19:20
  •   Comments Off
  •   News

GLC hits over a mIllion points!

March 2, 2013 19:48 March 2, 2013 19:48 March 2, 2013 19:48
 

Safecasters Joe Moross (far left) and Pieter Franken (far right), flanking GLC’s bGeigie team.

Global Survey Corp., which goes by the initials “GLC,” has been mapping Japan’s roads since 2005. Their data is used in many car navi systems, as well as for quite a few specialized applications. For instance, since 2009, the company has been measuring and mapping electromagnetic wave intensity to help customers optimize the placement of antennas for radio broadcast and wireless LANs, and to improve location accuracy for cell phone providers. So they have experience gathering invisible environmental data.

GLC website

Safecast was very fortunate to be introduced to GLC in August, 2011, by Prof. Tomo Furutani, part of Prof. Jun Murai’s team at Keio University, which also provided material support for the project. By early September that year GLC had a bGeigie in operation on one of their road-mapping vehicles, and soon asked for two more. The results they obtained in one year with three bGeigies were so good, we provided ten more units in December 2012. GLC recently passed the million-measurement mark for Safecast, which makes them our single most prolific data-gathering volunteer. We’re incredibly grateful for the time and effort they have put into collecting radiation data for us.

Hidenori Nakajima, the GLC liaison for this project, says, “After 3/11, so many people in Japan were in trouble, and our company wanted to do something for them. When we heard about Safecast’s bGeigie system, we were extremely impressed. Anyone can use it just by attaching it to their car. We’re very happy we’ve been able to help.”

A GLC mapping vehicle with bGeigie attached

GLC has told us that they try to cover every major road in Japan three times a year, and all the other roads at least once each year. Out of their fleet of 14 cars, 7 or 8 are on the road at any one time. With so many bGeigie-equipped vehicles constantly crisscrossing the country we estimate that GLC could soon be providing 500,000 measurements per month to Safecast. To that, we all say, “Hooray!”

Information, Misinformation, Disinformation (or, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”) Part 1

December 29, 2012 18:07 December 29, 2012 18:07 December 29, 2012 18:07
 

Whose job is it to make this stuff easy to understand?

“YOU CAN’T ALWAYS FIND WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR…..”
[Skip to Part 2] At Safecast we assumed from the start that our data should be accurate, easy to understand, informative, well-visualized, and easily accessible. In many respects this simply reflects “best practices” in information design, as well as a vision of social responsibility in which openness and transparency are paramount virtues. So when we make decisions about how to present our data, we adhere to principles of intuitiveness, depth, context, and dare we say it, beauty in design. We want to make it as easy as possible (AEAP) for people to find what they’re looking for, and to find out what it means. That’s why we’re continually miffed when official sources of information seem to be operating under an entirely different set of assumptions.

To be honest, the seriousness of government missteps and opacity during the early weeks of the disaster led us to accommodate ourselves to vastly lowered expectations in terms of the quality and accessibility of information we’d probably see from official sources. Even though it’s their job, and they are legally required to provide many kinds of information, many of us prepared ourselves for endless tooth-pulling and fact-checking about radiation information. So first, I’d like to give a sort of brief status update:
1) The government has made a lot of information available, more than we expected (because we expected nothing).
2) It still needs to be scrutinized, fact-checked, and independently confirmed.
3) There are still some areas where a lot of us have been pulling teeth for months and still haven’t been able to get the information we’re looking for.

So let’s just agree to live with #2 and #3 for the moment. It means constant effort on our part, but enough of us are constitutionally well-equipped for this kind of research-based tug-of-war that it’s not really that onerous at this point. We get good at it, we build trust, and people who were once opponents sometimes become allies, because frankly, they need our help.

But #1 is where we find ourselves really scratching our heads. There is all sorts of official information available, and a lot of it is proving reliable, but it’s rarely as easily accessible or informative as it should be. In fact, locating and using the data is usually as difficult as possible (ADAP) considering how easy it is now to find good information and web designers, and how inexpensive it has become. It should be easy to do a good job, if the people in charge really care about doing a good job. Continue reading »

Information, Misinformation, Disinformation (or, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”) Part 2

December 29, 2012 18:06 December 29, 2012 18:06 December 29, 2012 18:06
 

A MEXT radiation monitoring post, aka “droid,” of a common type manufactured by NEC . This one is at the former Akasawa Elementary School in Aizu-Misato.

GOVERNMENT MONITORING POSTS

[Part 1 here] In recent months there has been a fair amount of controversy concerning the accuracy of the radiation monitoring posts the government has installed all over Fukushima prefecture, and in some neighboring prefectures as well. We wrote about it back in July, 2012:

TEPCO cheating on radiation levels by using “improved” monitoring posts

There are almost 700 of these monitoring posts (675 at latest count), which we refer to as “droids” because of how they look (see photo above). They are all powered by solar panels and use storage batteries.
[Update: 2700 monitoring posts have been installed as of Feb. 2013]
Through the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT), the government spent a lot of money (we haven’t been able to find out precisely how much) to have them installed, and spent more money to have a web site made that displays the readings: MEXT realtime environmental radiation page

From this reasonably attractive-looking page, users are supposed to click on a prefecture, then on a region of the prefecture, and then choose from any one of a dozen or more municipalities. Then a scrolling list appears on the right hand side, and users can select a particular monitoring post to review (In the case of Koriyama City in Fukushima, there are 393 monitoring posts in the list). A zoomable, scrollable Google Fusion map appears, and the individual posts are marked by colored dots. Clicking a dot gives the current reading at that location, updated very 10 minutes it seems, and it is possible to download data for the entire month. So, thank you for doing that much, at least, MEXT.

This system sucks in many ways. While working with it in order to compare the MEXT readings with our own, we’ve found that it’s impossible to get an overview of more than a small part of Fukushima at any one time, that hunting down particular locations is incredibly time consuming and frustrating, that the cumulative time data does not go back far enough, and that the downloadable data comes with many restrictions and is difficult to pull down efficiently. Yes, MEXT made this system ADAP — As Difficult As Possible. Continue reading »

Safecast at RADIEX 2012 report

October 20, 2012 20:32 October 20, 2012 20:32 October 20, 2012 20:32
 

Safecast volunteers and friends at Radiex. Medcom CEO Dan Sythe is second from left.


Radiex 2012 was a major trade show for products and services related to radiation monitoring, decontamination, and remediation, and was held at the Science Museum in Kitanomaru Koen in Tokyo from Sept 24-26 this year. When Dan Sythe, CEO of International Medcom, told us that he planned to attend and invited us to share his booth, we jumped at the chance. Medcom, which makes the Radalert and Inspector series of detectors, has been a staunch Safecast supporter from the very beginning, and provided us with much needed radiation detectors as well as extremely helpful advice. Medcom, as those who have been following along already know, will be the first manufacturer of our original open-source geiger counter, designed by Andrew “bunnie” Huang, and also does quite a bit of business in Japan, where its devices enjoy a  very high reputation for reliability and cost-performance. We had quite a few reasons to want to participate, such as to make new contacts, talk about our work, and show off our devices. But we also looked forward to spending a few days hanging out with Dan.
 
http://www.radiex.jp/e/index.html
 
Our preparations were a bit more involved than most of our presentations usually are, since we needed to design and print banners for the booth and several different flyers in both Japanese and English, organize display cases and lighting, and prepare new talks. Lots of volunteers pitched in, and amazingly we were ready on time for the Monday morning opening. About six of us manned the booth at one point or another, and Dan, Pieter, Kalin, and Joe gave talks, while Pieter and Dan participated in a panel discussion on the final day of the event.
Continue reading »

  • October 20, 2012 20:32
  • Posted by azby on October 20, 2012 20:32
  •   Comments Off
  •   Contributor