Participate: Pervasive Computing for Mass Participation in Environmental Monitoring

参与是诺丁汉大学和巴斯大学与行业合作伙伴英国电信、英国广播公司、微软研究、科学范围和BLAST理论之间的一个项目。该项目的总体目标是探索普适计算如何支持全国范围内的运动，在这些运动中，数百万人收集和分享有关当地环境的信息，建立全国环境问题地图，提高认识，鼓励辩论和民主。我们所说的普适计算是指我们无论走到哪里都可以使用的计算，包括我们随身携带的个人设备(我们的移动电话和掌上电脑)，以及可能嵌入到我们周围环境中的传感器和显示器。在我们的项目中，这种普适计算将使个人和当地团体，包括学校，能够收集和上传关于当地环境的大量信息。然后将由专家进行筛选，并通过互联网或电视和广播向其他人提供。其结果将是一种新的媒体形式，即移动、在线和广播的混合体，将为英国带来社会和经济利益。为了实现我们的愿景，我们需要开发一种新的软件平台，可以集成在无线和固定网络组合上运行的不同类型的设备。然后，我们需要将传感器和设备与该平台集成，并创建支持在线和广播服务。作为这项工作的一部分，我们将开展和研究两项试点活动，一是在不同地点进行一系列小规模试点，二是在此基础上在全国范围内开展试点。这些活动需要得到更多基础研究的支持，这些研究将由大学开展，并得到EPSRC的支持。诺丁汉大学的研究人员将开发新的灵活方法，使许多人能够与许多传感器合作，包括探索手机游戏是否可以提供一种很好的方式来激励人们参与该项目，同时收集有用的数据作为副作用。诺丁汉团队还将开发新技术，以支持从大量传感器收集的数据的存储和查询，其中许多传感器是移动的。与此同时，该项目将为巴斯大学的研究人员提供一个宝贵的机会，研究这些普及技术对学校内部和整个公众的学习产生的影响。

Participate is a project between the Universities of Nottingham and Bath and industry partners British Telecom, The BBC, Microsoft Research, Science Scope and Blast Theory. The overall aim of the project is to explore how pervasive computing can support nationwide campaigns in which millions of people gather and share information about their local environments, building a country-wide map of environmental issues, raising awareness, and encouraging debate and democracy. By pervasive computing we mean computing that is available to us wherever we go, including the personal devices that we carry with us (our mobile phones and handheld computers) as well as sensors and displays that may be embedded into the environment around us. In our project, this pervasive computing will enable individuals and local groups, including schools, to gather and upload vast quantities of information about their local environments. This will then be sifted by experts and made available to others over the Internet or through television and radio. The result will be a new media format, a mixture of mobile, online and broadcast, that will bring social as well as economic benefits to the UK.In order to realise our vision, we need to develop a new software platform that can integrate different kinds of devices running over a combination of wireless and fixed networks. We then need to integrate sensors and devices with this platform and also create supporting online and broadcast services. As part of this, we will run and study two pilot activities, the first a series of small scale pilots in different locations, and the second a nationwide pilot that builds on these. These activities need to be supported by more fundamental research that will be carried out by the universities and supported by EPSRC. Researchers at the University of Nottingham will develop new and flexible ways of enabling many people to collaborate with many sensors, including exploring whether mobile games can provide a good way of motivating people to take part in the project while collecting useful data as a side effect. The Nottingham team will also develop new techniques to support the storage and querying of data that has been gathered from large numbers of sensors, many of which are mobile. At the same time, the project will provide researchers at the University of Bath with a valuable opportunity to study the impact that these kinds of pervasive technologies have on learning, both within schools and also by the public at large.