Holes were drilled manually by tough volunteers down to three meters deep just like this.

Groundwater monitoring pipes were prepared with perforation holes and installed by the volunteers.

With some help of the supervisory team.

The volunteers started measuring. First a few bad measurements, then mostly perfect measurements onward. 

The volunteers turned into citizen scientists by unlocking their locations and adding the GPS coordinates - locations with transparency. Now their locations show up on the map for all the world to see!

Colors on the map help to keep hand measuring at the right frequency - configurable per location.

Green says everything is alright. Orange means that it is now time to measure. Red screams overdue - time for the community to help remind this person to measure!

A simple click on the location marker reveals an informative graph. Groundwater levels clearly fall low in summertime, thereby sucking down fresh air with oxygen into the swamp-like Dutch soil.

As a result peat layers oxidize (rot) which makes the land subside while releasing significant amounts of greenhouse gasses. Any old wooden foundations of Dutch buildings found in the area may deteriorate with significant building damage as a result. Ever wondered why houses in old Dutch city centers look like they are almost falling over?

A multi-year graphs reveals that the groundwater level is different each year.

High wintertime levels show that the groundwater is normally quite close to the surface. But low level depressions in summertime actually have a different timing each year. 

Active groundwater management with  such as drainage and irrigation combined with continuous monitoring can help to keep the groundwater level more steady.

Groundwater Global was provided with the shape file of the area of interest for the Delft Meet project.

In this case the municipal area of Delft.

Data is systematically collected for all unlocked transparent locations within the area through the Groundwater Global API.