IS428 AY2019-20T1 Assign Linus Cheng Xin Wei

VAST 2019 MC2: Citizen Science to the Rescue

Overview

One of St. Himark’s largest employers is the Always Safe nuclear power plant. The pride of the city, it produces power for St. Himark’s needs and exports the excess to the mainland providing a steady revenue stream. However, the plant was not compliant with international standards when it was constructed and is now aging. As part of its outreach to the broader community, Always Safe agreed to provide funding for a set of carefully calibrated professional radiation monitors at fixed locations throughout the city. Additionally, a group of citizen scientists led by the members of the Himark Science Society started an education initiative to build and deploy lower cost homemade sensors, which people can attach to their cars. The sensors upload data to the web by connecting through the user’s cell phone. The goal of the project was to engage the community and demonstrate that the nuclear plant’s operations were not significantly changing the region’s natural background levels of radiation.

When an earthquake strikes St. Himark, the nuclear power plant suffers damage resulting in a leak of radioactive contamination. Further, a coolant leak sprayed employees’ cars and contaminated them at varying levels. Now, the city’s government and emergency management officials are trying to understand if there is a risk to the public while also responding to other emerging crises related to the earthquake as well as satisfying the public’s concern over radiation.

Data Preprocessing

Data Files

Name	Info
VAST 2019 - St. Himark - About Our City.docx	A document describing the scenario, as well as general information about St.Himark
MC2_datadescription.docx	A document that provides descriptions for data files provided for MC2
MobileSensorReadings.csv	Contains readings from 50 mobile sensors that are attached to cars. Data fields include: Timestamp, Sensor-id, Long, Lat, Value, Units, User-id. The timestamps are reported in 5 second intervals, though poor data connectivity can result in missing data. Each sensor has a unique identifier that is a number from 1 to 50. Location of the sensor is reported as longitude and latitude values (see map description below). The radiation measurement is provided in the Value field. Radiation is reported with units of counts per minute (cpm). Each measurement is independent and does not represent a summation over the previous minute. Some users have chosen to attach a user ID to their measurements while some others chose with a default name.
StaticSensorReadings.csv	Contains readings from a set of carefully calibrated professional radiation monitors at fixed locations throughout the city. Data fields include: Timestamp, Sensor-id, Value, Units.
StaticSensorLocations.csv	Contains locations of the static sensors
StHimarkMapBlank.png	A picture containing the outline of the whole area of St Himark
StHimarkNeighborhoodMapNoLabels.png	A picture containing the outline of neighbourhoods in St Himark, without any labels
StHimarkNeighborhoodMap.png	A picture containing the outline of neighbourhoods in St Himark, including neighbourhood name, Nuclear plant and hospital labels
StHimarkLabeledMap.png	A fully labelled map of St Himark, including main roads and bridges
StHimarkNeighborhoodShapefile	A folder containing a map of the neighbourhoods provided as a shapefile. Geometry of the polygons is reported in meters.