Outlining the scope of sustainable instrumentation

Abstract

Conventional instrumentation used in environmental sciences is not always suited to fieldwork and can be costly to maintain and repair. The REVERSAAL research unit, which is based at the Lyon-Grenoble Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes INRAE center, has initiated a sustainable instrumentation concept that addresses many of the social and environmental responsibility concerns promoted by INRAE, such as reducing the environmental impact of research tools and environmental protection facilities, promoting fully open science, and making developed tools and their components accessible and reusable. This instrumentation philosophy is built on three pillars: open-source software, open-hardware design, and a low-tech approach to electronics. Two flagship projects embody this concept. The first, OhmPi, is a resistivity meter designed for characterising porous media such as soils. The second, SETIER, develops sustainable instrumentation for monitoring wastewater treatment processes. These projects provide a framework for innovative, reliable instrumentation and demonstrate the feasibility of open-source and open-hardware measurement tools that are easy to repair, adaptable and user-friendly.