Using Participatory Approaches To Instigate Improvements in Water Quality, 2021-2022

The ‘UpStream’ project was co-created, co-developed and co-delivered with two active community groups in the UK (Friends of Bradford's Becks) and Taiwan (Taiwan Clean Water Alliance) who both were concerned about water pollution in their local rivers. The project has provided a testbed to achieve the aim of the project of aiding citizen scientists better understand local water quality. This has led to the development and deployment of a cost-effective Continuous Water Quality Monitoring device, the WaterBox, along with methods for transmitting, storing, visualising, and analysing the data collected. Parameters collected include: pH, temperature, conductivity and turbidity. A total of 104 practicalities of continuous water quality monitoring were observed and categorised as either technical, social, economic or wider responsibilities. These have been summarised in a publication that is current;y under review.