New sensor network makes real-time flooding, air-quality data available to Rhode Island communities

Sol Cooperdock, a research associate at Brown who oversees the NEST project, says he sees several ways in which the dashboard could be of immediate use to people and communities across Rhode Island. For example, the data could provide communities with the documentation they need to take action toward addressing problems in their communities.

"There are times - like when individuals or communities are applying for grants - that people need data to prove that their lived experience is real," Cooperdock said. "A community may know very well that there's regular flooding in a certain area, but they might not have the hard data to back it up. We can provide those data."

NEST could also help emergency managers monitor conditions in real time as events unfold, helping them to make decisions about when to close roads, for example.

"Emergency managers often have to go out with measuring sticks during flooding events to measure water levels," Cooperdock said. "But if they're able to check the dashboard, that could save them a lot of time. It also gives them continuous data instead of just snapshots from when they were able to get out there."

Meredith Hastings, chair of Brown's Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and project lead for Breathe Providence, said she hopes inclusion of air quality sensors on the dashboard will raise awareness of air-quality issues, particularly among vulnerable populations.

"The idea behind Breathe Providence is to have air quality data available in neighborhoods across Providence, particularly in areas of the city where residents experience some of the highest asthma rates," Hastings said. "Including the data on the NEST dashboard is another way to let people know these data are around and are something they can use."

Over the longer term, the NEST team is hopeful that the network can provide data that could improve forecast models and enable better, more detailed predictions of extreme events like flooding or wind damage.

"We'd like to develop forecast models that are more spatially explicit, but the challenge has been a lack of validation data," Di Lorenzo said. "The NEST data could help us to build the baseline datasets to validate those models."

For now, however, the researchers say their focus is on providing data directly to communities who need it most.

"The whole purpose of this is that it's for the public," Cooperdock said. "I'm a scientific researcher, but over the last several years I've been focused more on providing data that people can use and that are relevant to their local communities."

Cooperdock says he's interested in hearing from municipal officials or members of the public about where additional sensors might be useful. Contact information for the NEST team is available on the project website.