CitizenScience4Water

High school students and college students become scientists monitoring the water sources around their home and school for pollution.  They will take a ONE Health approach in analysing water used by animals, agriculture and human consumption.   The effect of the polluting compounds on microbial diversity and the drivers for AMR bacteria will be analysed. 

Rama Vaidyanthan, Ph.D.

Visiting Faculty

Environment and Water Resource Engineering, Dept of Civil Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India

Water sources for drinking, household use, agricultural and veterinary practices are an important source of AMR in the ONE Health ecosystem.  

Tamil Nadu with a population of 84 billion is a water-starved state with only 3 % of the country’s water resources.  Even though water in the state is critical, the societal involvement in maintaining water resources has been a challenge.  Littering of the river catchment areas, using them for other purposes, illegal entry of untreated sewage and industrial wastes continue to plague the state.  Higher usage of antibiotics in human healthcare, agriculture and veterinary practices along with anthropogenic activities contaminate water bodies.

While the government and NGOs have spent enormous resources for cleaning water, the involvement of the local people in maintaining the water resources clean has been very low.  There is a clear gap in the community in taking responsibility for maintaining the water resources.  While people focus on clean water for drinking purposes, the contaminated water is used for  animals, agricultural practices and household usage. The natural role of soil and water microbial diversity in water remediation has been undermined leading to higher coliform growth in the waters leading to the spread of AMR genes.

Tamil Nadu has a population of 84 billion. Of these, 8.4 % of the female population and 8.9 % of the male population are in the age group of 15 to 19 years (2011 census).  This is a crucial age where young people develop vital life skills, develop sound judgment and reasoning, and learn to discern right from wrong.  Empowering these students to make sound decisions based on scientific reasoning will be critical in building a strong country.

The CitizenScience4Water project will give a sense of identity for the volunteers and empower them to collect data on the quality of water using scientific methods.  The volunteers will be given a certificate for their involvement. Their participation in this project will lead to a scientific training, better networking and soft skills of the students helping them in their career.

The analysis of data to identify the sources of AMR pollution and suggesting suitable reclamation methods will lead to a cleaner environment and better health for their families.  The local community in the region and the general public will benefit due to lower costs for healthcare and water.  It will be a local solution for a global problem. 

The state government will benefit from the additional data and well trained potential employees.

CitizenScience4Water will lead to cleaner water bodies that are safe for humans, animals. It will also lead to responsible practices in agriculture, medicine, pharmaceutical disposal to ensure lower levels of pollution in water bodies. 

The citizen science approach will train volunteer students in scientific methods of observation, analysis and interpretation to suggest methods to reclaim and maintain water bodies clean.  Professionally trained individuals are an asset to the society.  It will also improve an understanding of the scientific method and counteract increasing spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories.

The mobile application and open access dashboard will provide continuous and dependable data on water bodies.  These can be adapted for other projects as well.

The database of microbial diversity from water bodies and the AMR genes can be used to understand the bio-geochemical pathways operating in the water bodies and the drivers of AMR genes.  Development of a database of the microbes from water bodies and the AMR genes will be an invaluable resource leading to publications on understanding the patterns of AMR evolution due to anthropogenic activity. 

Our target population is the high school and college students who will be empowered to analyse and interpret quality of water bodies.  Our pilot experiments have shown that students are very interested when they work with water samples from their own homes and are very keen to know what remedial action can be taken.

The methodology adopted by CitizenScience4Water will train the students scientific methods of observation, analysis and analysing and reporting of their results.  We expect these students to play an important role in keeping the water bodies clean for all.

We plan to start from the local city of Chennai and then to other locations in Tamil Nadu. Word of mouth recommendations from the volunteers will be used to identify other volunteers.  Training and appreciation of the volunteers through certificates of participation will be a focus area to engage the volunteers.

The information from the program will be conveyed to the general public and to Institute alumni to attract more participation in the program.  A coffee table book on the program impact will be published.  Local newspapers and magazines will be used as a channel to spread awareness about the program.

Publication in scientific journals will increase the acceptance of the study results.

The following key performance indicators  will be used to check our progress: 

Number of schools and student volunteers in the program: In our pilot we have worked with 1 school and 5 volunteers.

Number of samples collected and analysed : 6 water samples have been collected and analysed in the pilot

Completeness and accuracy of the data : Some of the students found it difficult to capture all the data required

Development of the mobile App and number of active users : We are analysing existing applications for similar use and plan to adopt one

Development of the dashboard, data updation and user statistics 

Feedback from the student volunteers in the knowledge and other deliverable from participation

Number of scientific publications from the data

Number of water bodies that have been cleaned

We have a very robust network with schools to identify student volunteers.  We are identifying the student volunteers who are working on these projects.

Some of the barriers we find are in the cost of the testing methods.  The present testing methods cost at least Rs 5000/- per sample. Also we needed to visit the same school 4 times to train the students.  These problems can be solved by training the trainers, which we seek to recruit from local colleges. Production of a booklet and establishing alternative methods for testing will further remove barriers for rolling out the project.

The microbiological and molecular biology experiments are expensive and need specific training. We need the volunteers who are trained on the WGS methods to stay on the program for atleast 3 years.

We are working onb methods to reward the volunteers based on their contribution of data

I am applying to the Trinity Challenge for the funds, networking and learning opportunities to take this CitizenScience4Water project to higher application.

I am a mentor to a Ph.D. student who is working on the prototype development. I see a huge potential in applying this citizen science project. We would benefit greatly from the mentorship offered by the Trinity Challenge jury.

We would like to collaborate with organisations which have developed mobile applications for citizen scientists and dashboard for visual representation of data