The Japanese government has been slow to share radiation readings from the contamination that resulted from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant failure, and historically notorious for their lack of willingness to share data with the public. The scarcity of reliable information led to a public effort with Joi Ito, director of MIT Media Lab, as an instrumental actor in getting a crowdsourced solution off the ground.
Volunteers armed with sensors have been hard at work to understand and map the radiation impacts through the nonprofit organization Safecast, which has a global presence. These volunteers use a number of sensors such as geiger counters to measure raw radiation levels from moving vehicles and on the ground, to help determine hot spots that should be avoided.
In addition off-the-shelf sensors, the Safecast group has configured a sensor cluster made up of a geiger counter, a GPS receiver, and an SD card to record readings. These devices are being distributed for vehicle-based sensing, and the readings are being aggregated on a map in order to communicate the contamination levels to the public.
View this 10-minute video coverage from PBS NewsHour for more details on this crowdsourced data gathering and mapping effort.
