{"id":226554,"date":"2025-12-07T08:38:03","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T18:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=226554"},"modified":"2025-12-07T08:42:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T18:42:15","slug":"hawaii-hazard-monitoring-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2025\/12\/07\/hawaii-hazard-monitoring-project\/","title":{"rendered":"$1.25M project merges tech, community design for Hawai\u02bbi hazard monitoring"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
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Tyler Ray and Kendall Lorenzo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To better protect Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>\u2019s people and ecosystems from threats, such as wildfires, drought, flooding, hurricanes, tsunamis, water contamination and more, University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at M\u0101noa and Georgia Tech researchers have secured a $1.25 million grant from the National Science Foundation<\/a> to build faster, cheaper, locally made sensors that deliver potentially life-saving data in real-time.<\/p>\n

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The funding will support the development of low-cost sensors that can be printed in minutes and deployed the same day to collect actionable data for communities and organizations across the state. These sensors could measure water quality or soil contamination signals, and then connect to an AI<\/abbr>-enabled handheld device smaller than a cell phone, that processes and transmits data to the web in real-time. Users could then view and interpret the data via a publicly available dashboard.<\/p>\n

Community kuleana<\/h2>\n

To ensure its success, the technology will be co-designed with groups who have kuleana (responsibility) for communities, land and water across Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>, including land stewardship organizations, Hawaiian-language immersion schools and community colleges. These ʻ\u0101ina<\/span> (land) stewards, k\u016bpuna (elders), residents and kumu (teachers and educators) will guide priorities, experiment with prototypes and define success criteria.<\/p>\n

“We can shorten the path from idea to instrument and build sensors tuned to local priorities without relying on centralized, hard-to-access facilities,” said principal investigator and UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa College of Engineering<\/a> Associate Professor Tyler Ray<\/a>. “Our goal is a design-to-deployment pathway that works on-island: robust, affordable and replicable.”<\/p>\n

The team is developing the sensors to pair with a small, durable edge device that can harvest and store energy, run machine learning models and work even with limited network connectivity. An open library of circuits and firmware will let partners quickly customize sensors for measuring targets from pH<\/abbr> and turbidity to heavy metals and contaminants.<\/p>\n

“This grant recognizes that Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> is a key leader in the proper design of disaster and hazard response cyberinfrastructure,” said Josiah Hester, a Kanaka ʻ\u014ciwi<\/span> (Native Hawaiian) and associate professor of computing at Georgia Tech. “Deploying AI<\/abbr> devices in austere environments, making AI<\/abbr> interpretable and understandable, and providing these capabilities to everyone are key goals we will achieve. As a Native Hawaiian scientist and technologist, it is my own kuleana to translate these technologies that support stewardship, and we as a team are excited to see this work support our communities.”<\/p>\n

Building on community ties<\/h2>\n

The project grows from existing relationships across Oʻahu<\/span>, Maui and Kauaʻi<\/span>, including Hawaiian-language immersion schools and stewardship organizations, where residents, educators and resource stewards will guide priorities. The team will convene iterative design workshops, peer exchanges between partner sites on Oʻahu<\/span> and Maui, and a capstone gathering to synthesize findings and share open designs. Data governance will follow established frameworks to support local control and appropriate confidentiality for sensitive results.<\/p>\n

“Our approach follows advances in community-centered co-design where we will design the sensing agenda together with community partners,” added co-principal investigator Aurora Kagawa-Viviani, assistant professor in UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa\u2019s Water Resources Research Center<\/a> and Department of Geography and Environment<\/a> in the College of Social Sciences<\/a>. “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, how the data are stewarded, interpreted and made useful for community decision-making.”<\/p>\n

The grant will support hands-on training that connects students across K–12<\/abbr>, community colleges and research universities with partner sites. The team\u2019s open hardware, software and design artifacts will be released for others to adapt in island, rural and urban settings facing similar hazards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa and Georgia Tech researchers have secured a grant from the National Science Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":226582,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[1602,179,301,1659,1466,1363,1314,1579,9,347],"class_list":["post-226554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-ai","tag-college-of-engineering","tag-college-of-social-sciences","tag-geography-and-environmental-science","tag-manoa-enhancing-student-success","tag-manoa-research","tag-manoa-sustainability","tag-research","tag-uh-manoa","tag-water-resources-research-center","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t