Events

13th October 2022 – UpStream present at Taiwan’s Information Engineering Achievement Sharing Conference

UpStream’s Pei-Chun Chen and Chi-Ling Wei, from National Taiwan University, presented a poster at Taiwan’s Information Engineering Achievement Sharing Conference, ‌held in the city of Tainan. ‌

The conference, organised by Taiwan’s National Science Council, offered a great opportunity to share the work done in UpStream with other researchers focusing on information engineering, and to learn about similar and complementary initiatives. In particular, several researchers expressed interest in acquiring and co-testing WaterBoxes in their local rivers. We look forward to further developing the connections established at this conference.

21st September 2022 – UpStream presentation at the Catchment Data & Evidence Forum (Durham, UK)

Dr Amy Jones gave a presentation on the UpStream project at this year’s Catchment Data & Evidence Forum.

It was a hybrid event held online and at the University of Durham, and co-organised by Durham University with the CaBA(Catchment Based Approach) Catchment Data User Group (CDUG), which is a multi-sectoral CaBA working group, consisting of data users, data providers and modellers with a focus on the practitioner community.

The forum included presentations, discussions, and practical workshops around climate science, relevant datasets, strategic opportunities, and partnerships to further enable CaBA’s work, and new initiatives which can contribute to it. A summary of the forum and videos of the presentations are available from CaBA’s website. UpStream’s presentation can be found in Session 4.

On the topic of Amy’s presentation, forum’s moderators mentioned that “monitoring change is a key component of delivering the 25 Year Environment Plan” and that “the role of low-cost sensors combined with citizen scientists in Taiwan provided a superb case study, demonstrating both the social and scientific value of citizen science”.

The forum presented a great opportunity to share our work and to develop new connections.

A recording of the event can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDGD90VAgRg&t=2s

2nd July 2021 - Bradford Beck catchment walkover with local stakeholders

A day around the beck with Robert Hellawell , Amy from RPS and Eleanor from Newcastle Uni. We are their partners in a...
Posted by Barney Lerner on Friday, 2 July 2021

We have run various workshops and catchment walkovers with stakeholders since the start of the project in June 2021. Additionally, UpStream team members have participated in a variety of events, including forums, conferences, and student competitions.

Check out some event highlights below and visit this page again soon to learn more about recent events.

You can register your project involvement interests here. We would love to hear from you.

Previous events:

9th March 2022 - Data analysis & visualisation workshop (UK pilot site)

A hybrid in-person and online workshop enabled UpStream project team members from Taiwan and the UK to host a workshop with key community and professional stakeholders (Friends of Bradford's Becks, Aire Rivers Trust and Yorkshire Water) interested in the Bradford Beck catchment (UK). This event enabled the following:

A Taiwanese knowledge exchange session – attendees learnt about water quality parameters and standards from Taiwan’s perspective.

A live demonstration of UpStream’s first draft data portal and receive feedback from stakeholders to help shape future versions/iterations.

Take part in an interactive data session focussing on historic data from the Bradford Beck catchment, giving participants a chance to share local knowledge and stories. We asked stakeholders how they would like to view, interactive with and analyse water quality datasets once the Waterboxes are operational, and how this may be used to identify and track pollution sources.

A chance for our stakeholders to ask questions and provide suggestions and preferences.

This event enabled the UpStream team to collate feedback and ensure the data app (which is under development at the time of writing) is co-developoed with end users. It also enabled UK stakeholders to appreciate Taiwan's current status with regards to water quality datasets, and why they need the Waterboxes to help them tackle pollution problems.

26th December 2021 - Members of Taiwan’s UpStream team won Presidential Hackathon

Under the leadership of LASS, several members of Taiwan’s UpStream team joined and won this year's Taiwan Presidential Hackathon which aims to promote the application of open data to improve governance. Over the past few months, the team, which also includes members from government organisations, has worked hard to consolidate data from multiple sources, engage with a range of stakeholders and pilot a web platform, underpinned by hydrological models and analytics, to enable collaborative river basin management. Having won this hackathon will ensure stronger government support to this initiative, which extends beyond the technological component and aims to break down barriers and to empower citizens, businesses and government agencies to work together. The work being undertaken as part of UpStream is expected to further contribute to this project. The award ceremony will take place on 26th December at the Presidential Office Building.

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October to December 2021 - Signal testing in the Bradford Beck Catchment

Even though a big part of monitoring environmental parameters relates to the sensors themselves, and the data they generate, data transmission dictates whether we are able to receive the information remotely, and in real time. The latter is important because communities and officials are able to spot problems as they happen, including (in the context of UpStream) pollution spikes following a pollution incident, and enables them to react immediately. Real time data can also be useful for communities at risk of flooding. Transmitting data back remotely to a server also reduces the need to travel to site to collect the data manually, and offers a data storage solution independent of the monitoring device. However, every monitoring site is unique, technology is rapidly evolving, and there are many data transmission methods available, so which one should we use? Site-specific tests have been carried out as part of the UpStream project to determine this.

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‌Whilst the WaterBox is under development in Taiwan, we have worked with Friends of Bradford’s Becks (FoBB), Aire Rivers Trust and AnaSystem Inc. to carry out a series of signal tests within the Bradford Beck catchment. With locations chosen by the community, a member of FoBB has installed a piece of equipment known as ‘A4 SensMini’ which is able to transmit test data back to the internet. This kit has been rotated between different locations across the catchment to see which data transmission protocol works best. Data transmission methods we are interested in include 4G, LoRA WAN and NB-IoT. Findings from the signal tests are ongoing, and will be documented within our Knowledge Hub once tests are complete.

We would like to thank FoBB and AnaSystem for their time and enthusiasm, and also thank AnaSystem for loaning their testing kit.‌‌

24th September 2021 - Forum on Public-Private Cooperation for Watershed Governance (online)

On the occasion of World’s River Day, the Homemakers United Foundation (HUF) and Taiwan Clean Water Alliance (TCWA) organised an online forum on public-private cooperation for the environmental governance of river watersheds in Taiwan, with a focus on the Touqian River [Link to event and agenda].

The event included presentations by government officials, academics and representatives of citizen-led action groups. UpStream’s Li-Pen Wang was one of the invited speakers. In his presentation, Li-Pen provided an overview of the UpStream project and of UK’s (and EU’s) approaches to watershed governance and the role of citizen science in it. With contributions from UK partners, Li-Pen also provided examples of other UK citizen science projects focusing on water management.

UpStream’s collaborator Wu-Lung Hsu, from LASS, also participated with a presentation on the role of scientific and technology-savvy citizens in driving improvements in watershed management.

This forum was a great learning and discussion platform which has contributed towards the joint development of a vision for watershed governance in Taiwan.

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13th August 2021 - Touqian River catchment walkover with Taiwan Clean Water Alliance Union (TCWA)

A very interesting day along the Touqian River with Yoyo (鄭于育) and Ramus from TCWA and UpStream's Taiwan Team. We visited potential monitoring locations and assessed the feasibility of placing WaterBoxes at these. A huge thank you to our TCWA's hosts for showing us around, for sharing your knowledge of and passion for the river and for the delicious Hakka lunch. ‌

27th July 2021 - UpStream partner 'kick-off' workshop (online)

We were pleased to run our first partner workshop to share experiences, interests and expertise relevant to UpStream. This knowledge exchange event enabled the team to get to know each other, expertise can therefore be drawn upon throughout the project, and beyond.

Visit UpStream's Knowledge Exchange hub to hear from our team and the diffierent organisations involved in the project.