Scientific Citizens: Using Cell Phones to Collect Data

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Published on
July 16, 2010

Deborah Estrin is a computer science professor interested in the low-tech. To her, everyday technology -- as opposed to supercomputers and expensive gadgets -- are brilliant tools for data collection. The world's 5 billion cell phones -- and the cameras and GPS that are increasingly common components -- represent tremendous opportunities. Using "smart" mobile phones, researchers, community groups and journalists can design ways to capture information about people whose stories and health status are otherwise hard to capture.

Unlike developers of commercial applications for mobile phones, Estrin also is interested in finding ways to involve ordinary community members in research. 

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"I try to do things that you can't make money doing," Estrin joked to the National Health Journalism Fellows. She is the founding director of the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) at the University of California, Los Angeles. CENS creates smart phone applications that use data to illuminate social problems in a unique fashion. Research that uses mobile phones to capture data for personal or social projects is called "participatory sensing" and it allows people whose habits and health profile were previously unknown to share and participate in the process of gathering information. The approach could also be applied to journalism, providing interactive ways to involve the community in describing their own circumstances.

Students in one of her classes, for example, created an application called GarbageWatch which allowed them, in the course of their daily lives, to track recycling habits on UCLA's campus. What resulted was a map with photos that showed how much recyclable material gets thrown away. What's Invasive monitored the growth of invasive plants and peet, which Estrin gave to the staff members of national parks. In the Santa Monica Mountains, the data that staff collected in their regular business over ten days replaced costly surveying techniques that used to take 12 to 18 months.

"Use the mobile, not for surveying, but to get people directly [involved in chronicling] their daily lives," said Estrin. These applications are best used not to replicate clipboard survey-taking, but to track real-life situations. In Boyle Heights, five community organizations passed around a pool of 30 phones to track community members' paths from home to school or work as well as to answer questions and upload pictures about the conditions where they spend their time and the type of food they eat.

The participatory approach can also help individuals to manage their health. UCLA statistics graduate student Nathan Yau made a Twitter application for tracking daily habits called your.flowingdata that can be used to track all sorts of activities, from your soda intake to the effects of different doses of blood pressure medications.

There are some ethical questions that linger. Cell phone data is hard to anonymize and can be subpoenaed in the courts so how can or should people who create applications shield their participants? How should journalists and civic leaders use this kind of data, considering its shortfalls in sampling?

Excited about using this technology? Estrin says her group is about six months away from creating a template to create custom applications. "A year from now, it should be as easy as SurveyMonkey," she said. In the meantime, she suggests looking at sites like MobileActive for more ideas about new ways to use mobile phones. You can find more examples of how these applications have been used at Participatory Sensing.