Water for People, a nonprofit that installs water pumps in places without clean water, was concerned about keeping track of which of their pumps were working. Gallatin Systems created this app for them called FLOW (Field Level Operations Watch), currently in Beta version, so that they could monitor the pumps remotely. Volunteers, staff, concerned citizens, can quickly upload information about a pump’s status using an Android phone, and then we can all view it from our browsers. (Here’s the article from Good Magazine.)
So, I was thinking… wouldn’t it be cool if museums and science centers that are trying to go the participatory route used something like this? Of course, you could use it to monitor exhibits — visitors could tell the system when an exhibit was broken or when a nature trail sign was covered with graffiti. But more interesting would be its application outside the museum’s borders. Museum members, staff, even passersby could help gather data for citizen science projects or to monitor experiments. You could do social science experiments which would double as publicity for the museum by inviting people to add to the data pool at various points throughout your city. All kinds of exciting possibilities.
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