Mobile Portals for Community-Based Collaborative Environmental Monitoring

Abstract

Currently internet and mobile phone service providers and government agencies are seeking to reimpose the regime of the traditional pay-per-view paradigm in which the users of information and technology will left only with the power to consume 'officially' certified information and locked into the business models of the current eand mcommerce strategies. Computers have traditionally been disconnected from the situations in which they are used. Most distinguishing from traditional computers mobile communication devices are more related to their physical environment and situation of usage. Meanwhile driven by mobile computing there is an increasing interest in communitybased environmental monitoring, because sources of environmental information include more than official information from sensors at the scene, because humans, especially people on the spot, can also function as sensors. In this use scenario, mobile communication devices mutate into remote sensor devices for environmental monitoring. The increasing popularity of more sophisticated mobile communication devices will make mobile portals for community-based collaborative environmental monitoring more common in the future and has the ability to create goal-oriented virtual communities.