Synergy of Volunteer Measurements and Volunteer Computing for Effective Data Collecting, Processing, Simulating and Analyzing on a Worldwide Scale

TL;DR

This paper explores integrating volunteer measurements with computing to enable ordinary people to contribute scientific data using standard gadgets, demonstrated through cosmic ray air shower detection in urban environments.

Contribution

It introduces a system combining volunteer measurements and computing for scientific data collection, focusing on cosmic ray air showers using everyday gadgets.

Findings

Successful detection of night air showers using smartphones

Mapping of air shower distribution in Kyiv city

Potential for automated, community-based scientific data collection

Abstract

The paper concerns the hype idea of "Citizen Science" and the related paradigm shift: to go from the passive "volunteer computing" to other volunteer actions like "volunteer measurements" under guidance of scientists. They can be carried out by ordinary people with standard computing gadgets (smartphone, tablet, etc.) and the various standard sensors in them. Here the special attention is paid to the system of volunteer scientific measurements to study air showers caused by cosmic rays. The technical implementation is based on integration of data about registered night flashes (by radiometric software) in shielded camera chip, synchronized time and GPS-data in ordinary gadgets: to identify night "air showers" of elementary particles; to analyze the frequency and to map the distribution of "air showers" in the densely populated cities. The project currently includes the students of the National Technical University of Ukraine "KPI", which are compactly located in Kyiv city and contribute their volunteer measurements. The technology would be very effective for other applications also, especially if it will be automated (e.g., on the basis of XtremWeb or/and BOINC technologies for distributed computing) and used in some small area with many volunteers, e.g. in local communities (Corporative/Community Crowd Computing).