Robin on his bike in Tokyo with Safecast on his bag
Fukushima: EPFL hactivist empowers the public to participate in gathering radiation fallout data. While in Japan, Robin Scheilbler has been active in a Do-it-yourself computer engineering space called Hackerspace Tokyo. This group of scruffy engineers looking for bottom-up answers are the hands and minds behind a public initiative to record and communicate radioactivity levels in Japan following the Fukushima disaster called Safecast. Starting a PhD fellowship at the School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) this coming semester, Robin has been living in Japan for the last couple of years following an initial exchange semester in 2007. We spoke to Robin in Japan before he returns to Switzerland to give a conference at the NCCR MICS final event here at EPFL on September 5th. How did you get involved in a public initiative to share radiation data in Japan? - In March of 2011, after the Fukushima reactor fallout, everyone in Japan was asking themselves how they could help. A small group of us at Hackerspace in Tokyo realized that we would better serve the public interest by making something useful, rather than hauling debris around.
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