iWater: Citizen Science Platform
There is significant interest by citizens to collect data for use in conservation and environmental protection, and citizen science groups already collect their own ocean water quality data (i.e., Blue Water Task Force). We envision a citizen science platform where citizens can submit data to be used for water quality model development. In a sense, this is similar to iNaturalist (inaturalist.org) that allows citizens to upload photos of organisms to document biodiversity; in our case, citizens would upload geo-referenced data and photos documenting potential ocean pollution sources.
Challenge: Develop machine learning techniques to process images of potential ocean pollution sources. Use collected images (e.g., Surfline webcam network) and develop image recognition software to analyze the images.