A new Slop University research poster describes a barcode-and-sensor compliance platform deployed across four allotment sites, and the automated non-renewal queue it now feeds.
A four-site barcode-and-sensor deployment lifted compliance to 87 per cent, and the non-renewal queue it feeds runs with no appeals step
A four-site allotment society’s Sunday walk is now a barcode scan.
A new research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities, led by Professor Verity Marris with Associate Professor Casimir Beng of the School of Continuous Improvement and Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Mirela Hanke, describes a compliance platform built to replace the volunteer coordinator’s weekly round: a check-in kiosk and soil-moisture probe on every plot, a fortnightly photo upload, and a classifier that flags cultivation neglect ahead of any manual notice. Across the fourteen-month deployment, mean compliance at the three sites onboarded at launch rose from 61 to 87 per cent. Confirmed flags now enter the society’s non-renewal queue, published to plot-holders and closed to appeal once a plot is listed.
We’re grateful to the plot-holders who let a probe into their soil before they had seen a single compliance number back. The platform is as much theirs now as the University’s.
— Professor Verity Marris, School of Emergent Priorities
Beng, whose earlier work turned control-engineering instruments on the institutions that operate them, said the queue’s design leaves room for an appeals step in a later release, “once the committee has decided what evidence would actually change a determination.” For now, the Trajectory Analytics Group’s interest in closing the gap between a weekly walk and a continuous record continues to shape how the platform’s next intake is scoped.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.2rxtny.