Environmental Monitoring of the Rivers in Yogya

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= Rivers of Yogyakarta = There are three main rivers which passes through the urban areas of Yogyakarta, Code River, Winanga River, and Gajahwong River. lifepatch collaborating with many communities have conducted a project called Jogja River Project (JRP) on these rivers. These project is also part of Biodesign For The Real World, a collaboration between (Art)Science Bangalore, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and lifepatch. For the HLab2014, the River Node will focus on the Code River, one of the three rivers that run through Yogyakarta. The river is essential for the local community, for example, who raise fish in the traditional kerambas. However, the river has become polluted with, and the coliform bacterial contaminations are high. Seasonal flooding is also an issue. April, when the HLab2014 will take place, will be the beginning of the dry season. Quite different with the other rivers, Code River has its own characteristics. It is one from eight main rivers that connected with Merapi Volcano. That makes Code River became Volcano Debris flow channel each time the Merapi Erupt. Nowadays after the last eruption in 2010, 90 million meter cubic of volcano materials still stay on the top section of Merapi and waiting to flow down.

Merapi Hazard Zone Map
We will kick-off the 2 weeks of HLab2014 by taking a walk along the Code River and mapping existing kerambas. Another Yogyakarta group Airkami has already started mapping wells around the Code River, and they are working on bioremediation and biosensing as well. We will be making more friends in the area. The aim is to prototype 2 types of monitoring stations: a static buoy model, inspired by the traditional keramba, and a swimming robot, inspired by aquatic robots and old school toy boats. We will be building one each (static, swimming) over the course of the HLab2014 period, over a week, with extensive testing and measurement taking by the river next to Lifepatch head quarters.

HARDWARE
We will be working on these projects under the umbrella of the Hardware Node. STATIC STATION: The keramba are traditional anchored fish farms found through the river where currents are slow - we will work with local community members to learn to build a traditional keramba, which will offer fish farming as well as hydroponic plant growth and with a careful choice of plants, some toxin fixation.

SWIMMING ROBOT: We will start with a simple boat or even a fish (!), first to get our feet wet as soon as possible. These stations will be MEASURING: Conductivity, Temperature, Depth: http://www.rockethub.com/projects/26388-oceanography-for-everyone-the-openctd pH   Turbidity Flow rate E. coli detection -(faster, more quantitative) microcolony formation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJxDZi0CwrA Geolocalization, GPS Geiger counter? COD - my MFC-technology (Malthe) can potentially be used to detect toxic chemical compounds - Other ways to do this?

MAPPING


In addition to mapping the existing kerambas, we would like to GPS map the swimming robot location, and possibly directly send the information onto a map.

The Jogjya River Project already has a map started. Airkami has already started mapping wells around the Code River.


 * http://www.instructables.com/id/Track-your-route-using-arduino-microSD-card-shi/ (direct to google maps)


 * http://www.instructables.com/id/Building-a-semi-Smart-DIY-boat-with-Arduino-and-s/


 * https://xively.com/


 * http://manticore.deadmediafm.org/2012/03/realtime-gps-tracker-for-jogja-river-projects-2012-2-kali-winongo/

Possible camera streaming


 * http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK

Data visualization will remain a challenge - A mapping workshop on how to map data that is fleeting, with the presentation of the Jogjya River Map.


 * http://metamap.in

Other Ideas
Water sensing is important, however, water purification is also very important. During the hackterialab, we would also like to collaborate with the Forest Node.
 * Collect oral narratives from the local communities to find out what people used to do in the olden days to clear water - a folklore type of project
 * This is inspired from this paper, where folklore pointed scientists to use a positively charged Moringa oleifera seeds to clarify the water before UV treatment (PET bottles and sun).
 * The 2014 paper by Michael S. H. and Boutilier, Jongho Lee et al. using different tree bark to filter out bacterial particles seems very testable.

We should also visit the water filteration system built by Airkami.

Work in progress River Node Parts and Participation List
We are compiling a parts list here More information on project ideas and details are found here

JRP - Jogja River Project 2011-present
http://lifepatch.org/JRP_-_Jogja_River_Project

i would like to start discussing of building some ideas for the research collaboration on the river node in hackterialab 2014. as it is very related to the project (jogja river project = JRP) that lifepatch already conducted for several years, i will tell a bit of a background stories about it.

JRP (http://lifepatch.org/JRP) started from a simple initiative that we, as citizen wanted to explore our own river in the city. for years we have lived in yogyakarta, we never physically been in our own river in the city and basically doesn’t know what’s going on there even though we passed it million times already. so we have an idea in conducting a morning walk on the urban areas of the river, just to explore and see what’s going on. the idea evolved as we built a collaboration with microbiology ugm and cantigi - green tech that we also gather visual documentation and did several water sampling while we exploring the river. we chose e.coli as it’s primarily the first indication of the pollution on the water. we made a fb event and open it for the public. after 3 times of expedition in 3 different rivers of yogyakarta, the activities evolved accordingly with the communities that were involved, such as cleaning the riverbanks area from plastic waste, vegetation mapping etc, however the core of activities which is visual documentation and positioning, also with the e.coli water detection remains as the core of our activities. in 2013 JRP is part of the bio-design for the real world, a collaboration between EPFL, art(sic) bangalore and lifepatch. see more in http://biodesign.cc.

during 2013 we did several activities which you can see in http://lifepatch.org/Jogja_River_Project_2013. the output of the activities is published online, a mapping of e.coli detection and visual documentation. the link is: http://maps.lifepatch.org. 2013 we focus on code river, the main river of yogyakarta. and as donny, our advisor from UGM, guide us, we will focus only on this river for now, which we will take you on the field trip during hackterialab 2014. the plan for 2014 is the dissemination of the result to the communities while also we will investigate further to the headwaters to search for the source where the pollution started.

for the river node, i wo uld like to invite all hackterialab 2014 to collaborate on us with the project wether in developing new strategies, ideas, reach outs accordingly to the issues of citizen science in monitoring the river pollutions. it could be anything, and we’re inviting you to be freely and loosely collaborate with us with of course some framework and structures need to be developed as well. at the moment i’m giving some ideas and thought of my own below.

1. Open Source Hardware and Software
again it could be anything that relates to the river monitoring. at the moment i’m very interested in flow cytometry and hope some of you have the skills to help us in developing it. i’m very impressed with this: http://www.medgadget.com/2013/04/scientists-convert-a-cell-phone-camera-to-a-fluorescent-microscope.html if somehow we can develop this with the technology available in indonesia, it would be super great!

2. Workshopology and reach out methods
a reach out method such as workshops like http://lifepatch.org/Workshop_Swab_Test_untuk_mengetahui_kandungan_Bakteri_E.coli_pada_telapak_tangan is important. we would like to develop a reach out strategy to explain the issue to the community. Akbar our microbiologist, could you give in some thoughts about this?

3. water samplings and analysis
it would be great if we could develop some strategy to help out with the sampling gathering as it always quite challenging for the citizen to get this methodology correctly. Timbil, our project leader for JRP might have some thoughts of this? feel free to share.

4. online information
as you have seen in http://maps.lifepatch.org, our member, programmer, Iyok, have put the results of the 2013 expedition very nicely, combining the 360 photography from Wawies and Joan. I would like to also invite Hackterialab participants to give in some ideas about this.

i think the mentioned above is a good topics to start a discussion. feel free to ask questions and give in some of your ideas to this. we’re very exciting and hoping a fruitful discussions before we enter a physical collaboration next week.

BIO-DESIGN for the REAL WORLD
See more on http://biodesign.cc/

DIY turbidity meters and beyond
dusjagr has been working for quite a while on different DIY turbidity meters, now making new versions still baser on the BabyGnusbuino, with MIDI capability, VU-meters and speaker aka Niamuk Synthizaaiza...

Publiclab's data loggers and others
Besides intersting work on spectrophotometers and other nice webtools, like infragram, they also started some water monitoring, using the mchack platform for logging of temperature and conductivity:


 * http://publiclab.org/wiki/open-water


 * Interesting low-cost logger based on MCHCK


 * https://ioby.org/project/mystic-river-open-water

Caddisfly, Bangalore
Our friends in Bangalore have been continuing their work on a water quality test for drinking (F, As and e-coli). First with some hardware and color detection, now using a smart phone interface. contact arun and sam.


 * http://caddisfly.ternup.com/


 * http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bangalore/The-water-crusaders/2013/09/07/article1772633.ece