Everyone has the innate ability to perform research and draw conclusions, but not everyone has the necessary tools. In her talk, Shannon Dosemagen from Public Lab explains how her organization is empowering citizens to assess environmental impacts and urban development within their own communities. By providing DIY research experiments and a platform to compare results, citizens can record the damage caused by of disasters such as oils spill, catalogue changes in air quality, and map the sprawling development of refugee camps.
"Shannon Dosemagen developed a non-profit organization that bridges the gap between environmental research and the impacted communities. As the co-founder and CEO of Public Lab, Dosemagen engages with communities and helps design do-it-yourself research tools for grass-roots science.“Science belongs to the public,” Dosemagen said. “We all can do it and we all have a place in it.”
Public Lab was founded during the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. During the spill, very few residents had information about the impact on their region. Dosemagen and a group of concerned citizens developed a DIY areal mapping kit which allowed residents to chart the impact on the places they know and love. Since then Open Lab had expanded around the world and is currently engaging with more than 6000 people through this new type of citizen science."
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx
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