WHAT do you do on days when the air doesn鈥檛 smell right? Soon, you might just check Google Maps.
Google has teamed up with San Francisco-based sensor company Aclima and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to fit its Street View cars with environmental sensors. The cars will be used to produce up-to-the-minute neighbourhood pollution maps that could prove a lifesaver for people who suffer from asthma or other conditions that put them at risk when the air is bad. Air pollution kills an estimated 55,000 people every year in the US and 3.3 million worldwide.
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鈥淣eighbourhood pollution maps could prove a lifesaver for people who suffer from asthma鈥�
Air quality is typically measured by stationary equipment scattered throughout a city: New York City, for example, has 17 monitoring stations. But widely spaced sensors have a limited capacity to model the dynamic processes at work in an urban area, especially with wind, sunlight, humidity and traffic patterns shifting continuously.
The Google-Aclima project, by contrast, will move the sensors on to the streets. Cars fitted with mobile sensing equipment will criss-cross city neighbourhoods throughout the day to collect data about air quality. Algorithms will distil millions of readings for pollutants and greenhouse gases, including carbon monoxide, ozone and fine particulates, into colour-coded maps for the city.
These real-time pollution maps will go live for residents in the San Francisco Bay area on Google Earth Engine, a geospatial analysis platform, early next year. Website visitors will be able to see which pollutants are moving through their neighbourhoods or heading their way. California鈥檚 Central Valley and Los Angeles will get their own maps later in the year.
Epidemiologists will be able to use the data generated to correlate, for example, the timing of asthma attacks or admission into hospital emergency rooms with air quality in a particular location at a given time, says Melissa Lunden, director of research at Aclima. 鈥淭he health community is very interested,鈥� she says. The data should also help meteorologists model how air moves and diffuses through the concrete canyons of cities, says Lunden.
This is not the only project that aims to track pollution on the web. HabitatMap, a non-profit organisation in New York, has introduced a pollution-mapping app that doesn鈥檛 depend on cars roving the streets, but on pedestrians gathering data. Walkers strap on the AirBeam, a palm-sized sensor that records exposure to tiny particulates in the air as people move through the city. It sends that information to the , which transforms it into maps and graphs that show pollution severity and that participants can access on their smartphones.
Connecting the dots
Backed by funding from New York鈥檚 Department of Environmental Conservation, HabitatMap is currently working to calibrate AirBeam with the state鈥檚 air-quality monitors. It hopes that the information generated by citizen scientists will eventually be melded with the state鈥檚 data to create a fuller picture of what is happening on the streets. It is all about getting the community involved, says Michael Heimbinder, director of HabitatMap. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e connecting the dots when they are out there taking measurements, seeing for example how particulate levels spike when a subway car rumbles under the grates beneath their feet, or when a truck drives by.鈥�
Projects like these are going to help people make personal decisions, says Dan Costa, director of the EPA鈥檚 air, climate and energy research programme: 鈥淒o I walk down Acorn Street or Elm Street? Am I going to let my kids play outside today?鈥�
The revolution in low-cost portable pollution sensors will also prompt agencies such as the EPA to up their game, he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 going to move government to provide information in a different way 鈥� information that is in real time, locally based and that people can actually use.鈥�
(Image: Chris Stowers/Panos)
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淎ir pollution 鈥� live online鈥�
