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The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (Public Lab) is a non-profit organization that facilitates collaborative, open source environmental research in a model known as Community Science. It supports communities facing
The aerial photography technique Public Lab is best known for involves lifting cameras above an area using tethered helium-filled weather balloons.
environmental justice
Environmental justice is a social movement to address the unfair exposure of poor and marginalized communities to harms from hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses.Schlosberg, David. (2007) ''Defining Environmental Justic ...
issues in a do it yourself approach to environmental monitoring and advocacy. Public Lab grew out of a grassroots effort to take aerial photographs of the BP Oil Spill
The ''Deepwater Horizon'' oil spill (also referred to as the "BP oil spill") was an industrial disaster that began on 20 April 2010 off of the coast of the United States in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, considered ...
in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Since then, they have launched a range of projects, including an open source spectrometer, multi-spectral camera, and low-cost microscope.
Balloon Mapping
The aerial photography technique Public Lab is best known for involves lifting cameras above an area using tethered helium-filled weather balloons.
Open source environmental monitoring
Public Lab's community developsopen source hardware
Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and ...
, software, and other open methodologies to democratize environmental monitoring. Recognizing that cost, complexity, and lack of access can prevent communities from playing an active role in documenting environmental problems, the community publishes plans and guides for Do It Yourself monitoring projects that can be made at home.
References
Citizen science Environmental organizations based in the United States {{nonprofit-org-stub