Dr. Aurora Kagawa-Viviani of WRRC
Principal investigator and UH Mānoa College of Engineering Associate Professor Tyler Ray, co-principal investigator and Water Resources Research Center Assistant Professor Aurora Kagawa-Viviani, and Associate Professor at Georgia Tech Josiah Hester have earned a new $1.25 million National Science Foundation project grant that will develop affordable, efficient sensors to monitor hazards, like wildfires, drought, flooding, hurricanes, tsunamis, and water contamination, in Hawaiʻi.
The funding will support the development of low-cost sensors that could measure water quality or soil contamination signals, connect to an AI-enabled handheld device, and process and transmit data to the web in real time for communities and organizations across the state. Users would be able to view and interpret the data via a public dashboard.
This effort is co-designed with community partners to support quicker, more locally informed decision-making. It grows from existing relationships across Oʻahu, Maui, and Kauaʻi, including Hawaiian-language immersion schools and stewardship organizations. The team will conduct iterative design workshops, peer exchanges between partner sites on Oʻahu and Maui, and a capstone event to integrate findings and share open designs.
“Our approach follows advances in community-centered co-design, where we will design the sensing agenda together with community partners,” Dr. Kagawa-Viviani stated. “Building strong and equitable relationships ensures the technology and the data it produces have lasting value long after the prototype. Our design process considers who maintains it [and] how the data are stewarded, interpreted, and made useful for community decision-making.”