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Making the Invisible Visible: a Guide for Mapping Hyperlocal Air Pollution to Drive Clean Air Action

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Making the Invisible Visible: a Guide for Mapping Hyperlocal Air Pollution to Drive Clean Air Action Making the invisible visible: A guide for mapping hyperlocal air pollution to drive clean air action Table of contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .....................................................................1 PART 1: GETTING STARTED ............................................................5 1. Understanding your city’s air quality challenges and opportunities ...................................................5 2. Exploring tools to measure and map hyperlocal air pollution ...................................................11 PART 2: NUTS & BOLTS ..................................................................13 1. Designing a hyperlocal air monitoring network .....................13 2. Ready, set, go: Turning on and maintaining your network .......................................................28 3. Making sense of the data .......................................................40 PART 3: DATA TO ACTION ..............................................................45 1. Using air pollution data to develop and implement clean air solutions .........................................45 2. Building awareness and encouraging community engagement and support ...................................49 3. Measuring success and maintaining momentum ..................53 LIST OF EDF RESOURCES .............................................................54 Edition 1: October 2019 (this guide will be reviewed and updated periodically) Contributing authors Acknowledgement Elena Craft, Ph.D. We would like to thank the many partners and EDF, Senior Director, Climate and Health advisors who have collaborated with EDF on the Aileen Nowlan multiple projects mentioned in this guide, as well EDF, Senior Manager, EDF+Business as team members at EDF for their contributions. The lessons and insights in this guide draw from Harold Rickenbacker, Ph.D. these collective efforts. EDF, Manager, Clean Air & Innovation, EDF+Business Fern Uennatornwaranggoon EDF, Manager, Air Quality Policy EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The science is clear. Over the past few years, Environmental Defense Fund Air pollution is harmful to human (EDF) has worked with scientists, health, and its impacts — increased technology firms, grassroots hospital visits, missed work and organizations, and city leaders school days, boxes of rescue in the United States, United inhalers at schools — are frequent Kingdom, and China to design and reminders that its risks are real and deploy hyperlocal air pollution personal. Moreover, these risks monitoring systems that measure are highest for some of the most and analyze local air pollution vulnerable populations: children, levels. We have developed tools the elderly, and people with already and gained experience that compromised respiratory systems. can prove useful to cities with wide ranging challenges and Because air pollution is hard to capacities. By sharing these tools see, it’s often hard for local leaders and learning, we hope to better to pinpoint sources and trends to equip leaders to create lasting develop effective solutions. New improvements to local air quality. sensor technology is changing that dynamic, allowing us to measure The world needs air quality and map pollution concentrations solutions at scale. Nine out of block by block and identify patterns ten people worldwide breathe Through our work with city and and hotspots like never before. polluted air from their first breath community leaders, we’ve seen to their last. Global air pollution is how this new kind of data can Compared to conventional air now the biggest environmental risk help design new solutions, build pollution management, which of early death, responsible for as political support for action, increase commonly relies on a few sparsely many as seven million premature compliance, and hold polluters located monitors and modeling, deaths each year. That’s more than accountable. We have also learned hyperlocal monitoring allows for a AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria that robust engagement with more holistic picture of air quality combined. And recent studies community leaders and residents, at a high spatial resolution (with have uncovered that air pollution who are directly impacted by different concentrations every 30 can impact mental health, lung dirty air, is critical when creating meters, for example) and frequency development, and even stock thoughtful, responsive, and (different concentrations every market performance. impactful clean air solutions. minute or few minutes, rather Community engagement should than on an hourly or daily basis). Everyone deserves to breathe clean be undertaken as a long-term and Hyperlocal monitoring can fill a gap air, but where you live determines iterative process. Engagement in places where modeled data is not how likely pollution is to worsen or through one-on-one interviews, available. Additionally, measuring shorten your life. And while most focus groups, and citizen science on-the-ground pollution allows for conventional monitoring systems campaigns will help co-produce a better understanding of the true can provide a general sense of knowledge, increase self-efficacy exposure and health impacts of air a city’s air quality, they cannot among community members, and pollution, which can then result in account for air pollution at the ultimately build trust and ensure targeted solutions. neighborhood level, where people better results. live, work, and play. Research shows This guide provides advice on that air pollution is not evenly The world needs how to design, fund, implement, distributed and can in fact be up to air quality solutions analyze, and leverage data from a eight times worse on one end of a hyperlocal air quality monitoring city block than another. at scale. network, so you can develop solutions to improve health in your community. 1 Making the invisible visible: A guide for mapping hyperlocal air pollution to drive clean air action In Oakland, California, EDF officials in the wake of Hurricane to help London design, tailor, and and our partners developed air Harvey to measure emission events understand the impact of future pollution maps using data from that occurred following damage to clean air actions. a combination of stationary and the region’s petrochemical facilities, mobile monitors. By combining which provided a community In China, EDF scientists and these results with electronic health with information about high partners are working with officials records, we could map associated concentrations of benzene, a known to use hyperlocal insights to health risks by neighborhood. carcinogen. improve the efficacy of investigation Community leaders used them and enforcement through microgrid to advocate for mitigation efforts Building upon our work in the networks for more accurate under a new air quality law seeking U.S., EDF along with the Mayor identification of hotspots. to cut pollution in California’s most of London, Google, C40 Cities affected communities. and others recently launched Through our efforts, EDF has Breathe London, which combines learned about the budget, In addition to measuring air sophisticated data analytics with staffing, analysis, and logistics pollution via Google Street View state-of-the-art technology — such needed to monitor, map, and, cars in neighborhoods around as mobile monitoring on Google ultimately, reduce pollution at the Houston, Texas, EDF leaders worked Street View cars and over 100 neighborhood level. We hope these with key city staff to test how sensor stationary monitors — to collect air lessons support you as you consider systems on municipal vehicles pollution data points at thousands approaches to air pollution could alert the city to air pollution of locations. This is one of the monitoring that inform clean air threats and determine how many world’s most comprehensive air solutions and foster healthier sensor-equipped vehicles it would quality monitoring networks in one communities across your city. take to map air pollution across the of its busiest and most complex entire city. We also worked with city cities. These data create a baseline How to use this guide This guide provides advice on how to design, fund, implement, analyze, and leverage data from a hyperlocal air quality monitoring network, so you can develop solutions to improve health in your community. 03 DATA TO 01 02 ACTION GETTING NUTS & BOLTS Using air pollution STARTED data to develop and implement clean air Understanding Designing hyperlocal solutions your city’s air air monitoring Building awareness quality challenges systems and encouraging and opportunities Ready, set, go: community Exploring tools Turning on and engagement and to measure and maintaining your support map hyperlocal air network Measuring success pollution Making sense of the and maintaining data momentum 2 Making the invisible visible: A guide for mapping hyperlocal air pollution to drive clean air action PART 01: GETTING STARTED 1. Understanding your city’s air quality challenges and opportunities This section guides you through reasons to pursue hyperlocal monitoring, and how the change you’re hoping to create defines what and where you measure. This varies with the mix of pollutants in your city, stakeholders calling for action, available partners, and the need to meet specific health standards, among others. 2. Exploring tools to measure and map hyperlocal air pollution This section surveys the data, people, technology, and funding that advance a monitoring program. It introduces the types and sources of data that may
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