Monitoring surface water quality using social media in the context of citizen science

Surface water quality monitoring (SWQM) provides essential information for water environmental protection. However, SWQM is costly and is limited in terms of equipment and sites. The global popularity of social media and intelligent mobile devices with GPS and photograph functions provide immense opportunity for citizens to monitor surface water quality. This study aims to establish and demonstrate a method to monitor surface water quality using social media platforms. A WeChat-based application platform is built to collect water quality reports from volunteers. Results show that the monitoring reports are reliable if the volunteers are trained. The key application functions and the methods for data washing and volunteer recruitment are also discussed in this study. The proposed framework and method can provide a mechanism to collect water quality data from citizens and offer a primary foundation for big data analysis in future research.