HONOLULU & ATLANTA— Hawaiʻi faces increasing hazards, from water contamination and wildfires to flooding, hurricanes, tsunami, and drought. These threats strain local response capacity, especially when specialized testing and equipment must be shipped from the continent, slowing access to critical, time‑sensitive data.
To tackle this challenge, a multidisciplinary team from the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) at Mānoa and the Georgia Institute of Technology was recently awarded a new $1.25 million research grant from the National Science Foundation (NHS) to develop low‑cost, locally fabricated biosensors and AI‑enabled edge devices. These tools can be rapidly printed, deployed, and used by community partners to collect and interpret real‑time environmental data, from basic signals like pH and turbidity to indicators of heavy‑metal or organic contamination. A handheld, AI‑enabled reader and open‑access dashboard will support on‑island interpretation and decision‑making. All of these technologies are co-designed with groups who have kuleana (responsibility) for communities,ʻāina (land), and water across Hawaii, including land stewardship organizations, Hawaiian‑language immersion schools, and community colleges. These land stewards, kūpuna (elders), residents, and kumu (teachers and educators) will guide priorities, play with prototypes, and define success criteria.
“Our goal is a design‑to‑deployment pathway that works on-island: robust, affordable, and replicable,” says Tyler Ray, principal investigator (PI) and Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at UH Mānoa.
The technical approach combines an open, low‑cost advanced manufacturing workflow for sensor fabrication with a modular, water‑resistant edge device that can harvest and conserve energy, run lightweight machine‑learning models, and operate even with limited connectivity. A shared, open library of validated sensor “primitives,” circuits, and firmware will let partners rapidly assemble devices for specific use cases. The project anticipates monitoring basic signals such as pH and turbidity to more complex targets such as heavy‑metal and organic‑contaminant indicators will be of interest. The project will also establish a phone app and online dashboard for community partners to simplify setup and interpretation.
“This grant recognizes that Hawai’i is a key leader in the proper design of disaster and hazard response cyberinfrastructure,” says Josiah Hester, co-PI and Associate Professor of Computing at Georgia Tech. “Deploying AI devices in austere environments, making AI 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.”
The project grows from existing relationships across Oʻahu, Maui, and Kauaʻi, including Hawaiian‑language immersion schools and stewardship organizations, where residents, educators, and resource stewards will guide priorities, workshop prototypes, and define success criteria. The team will convene iterative design workshops, peer exchanges between partner sites on Oʻahu 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.
“Our approach follows advances in community-centered co-design where we will design the sensing agenda together with community partners,” added Aurora Kagawa‑Viviani, co-PI and Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at UH Mānoa. “Building strong and equitable relationships ensures the technology and the data it produces has 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.”
In addition to advancing additive manufacturing and edge‑AI research, the grant will support hands‑on training that connects students across K‑12, community colleges, and research universities with partner sites. The team’s open hardware, software, and design artifacts will be released for others to adapt in island, rural, and urban settings facing similar hazards.