FORENSIC VALIDATION OF DISTRIBUTED SENSOR NETWORKS

Situation

A 30-year distributed monitoring network (15,600+ measurements, $6M+ replacement cost) maintained comprehensive volunteer attribution metadata in a federal water quality portal. This metadata infrastructure enabled statistical validation analysis, but the program lacked a systematic correlation study against professional sensor networks.

Finding

Virtual Triangulation analysis (N=48 matched pairs) established high-fidelity correlation (R²=0.839) between volunteer measurements and federal monitoring networks. A systematic ~29% offset was detected, indicating protocol difference rather than data quality failure.

Impact

Validated integrity of a long-running distributed human-sensor network by establishing R²=0.839 correlation with reference sensors. Demonstrated that volunteer data collected under systematic QA protocols can correlate with professional monitoring at high fidelity.

Remediation

Developed a proof-of-concept Virtual Triangulation methodology and a reproducible validation framework for correlation analysis (validation complete; manuscript in preparation).