Using hyperlocal air quality data to improve Dubliners’ lives and health
Editor’s note: Today’s post is by the Dublin City Council’s Environmental Health and Smart City teams. The City partnered with Google’s Project Air View, which uses Street View vehicles with Aclima’s mobile monitoring platform to measure street-by-street air quality and greenhouse gasses.
In May 2021, the first electric Google Street View car equipped with Aclima’s mobile air sensing platform began its year-long journey driving down Dublin’s roads — in an effort to map air quality street-by-street. Launched by the Lord Mayor of Dublin at the time, Hazel Chu, we knew that this was going to be a special collaboration. Project Air View captures hyperlocal air quality insights that will be used to help improve the lives and health of Dubliners. Today, we’re sharing an update on the project, including preliminary finds and plans for how we’re using the insights.
This project is big on data! We are talking about over 50 million air quality data measurements taken by the Google Street View car and Aclima air quality sensors since May 2021. Over the course of one year, the Street View car has already driven nearly 30,000 km, collecting measurements multiple times (up to 40 drive passes on some roads) across the streets of Dublin’s fair city, to build a map of average annual air pollution. This data, once validated and analyzed, will inform us about the quality of the air, street by street.
At the moment, we are in the validation phase, working with scientists that specialize in air quality monitoring to make sense of the data collected so far. Towards the end of 2022, we should have validation completed, and will publish the data and maps shortly afterwards so we can work collaboratively to shape Dublin’s future environmental and climate policies.
Putting hyperlocal air quality data to work
We know from our existing stationary monitoring network that Dublin’s air quality is generally good, measured against the provisions of the Air Quality Standards 2011. The hyperlocal measurements from Project Air View reiterate this fact. However, the data also reveal the variability of air quality levels across streets in the city. For example, the streets along the quays on either side of the River Liffey in the City Center show relatively elevated NO2 levels compared to other streets which could be higher, on account of the congestion levels on these quays. The levels don’t exceed the Air Quality Standards, but do reflect the data emerging from the ongoing joint EPA/DCC diffusion tube survey and Project Air View corroborates the findings of that survey.
The mobile monitoring campaign allows us to identify air quality patterns at the street level, where fixed monitors can’t always reach. This new technology has shown us the potential to use more granular and hyperlocal data to measure impacts of city improvement projects. Example improvement projects that can affect air quality include making streets more pedestrian-friendly, greening neighborhoods or adding new cycle lanes. With the data from Project Air View, we’ll gain more knowledge about how air quality varies at specific locations and times. And we will use this data to aim to lower emissions, taking into account all the relevant factors and the ongoing engagement with the public. It is our goal to create healthier places and spaces for our communities across Dublin.
Opening up the data
We’re not the only people who will be viewing the data from Project Air View. Air quality experts from the EPA and local universities have helped us examine our data methodologies and guide us right from the start. Studying the hyperlocal data of Project Air View is an open-ended journey of policy setting and city improvement. In the future, we plan to explore fusing the fixed monitoring and hyperlocal data. We want this data to support research and policy developments.
The annual average map of air quality resulting from Project Air View will be available to the public once the data validation process has been completed. All data will be published on Google’s Environmental Insights Explorer and will also be made available through our open data platform — Dublinked. We plan to run hackathons and data challenges to see what innovative uses the data could have. We want this data to make a difference and it’s an opportunity to say to citizens, “Now it’s your turn. Look into the data and play around with it.”
A collaborative approach to air quality
Dublin’s air quality, and its impacts on city life and health, have been important areas of research for several years. We were the first Irish city to sign a commitment to bring air quality to safe levels by 2030 as part of the BreatheLife campaign launched by the World Health Organization in 2020. Our Smart Dublin Program collaborates with technology leaders, academia, and business startups to bring innovation to our city that helps improve Dubliners’ lives. As our Smart City team and Air Quality Monitoring unit work together to translate data into actionable insights for our city, we are excited to share more results.
We also want to engage other partners — there is a growing citizen science movement where communities across Dublin are collecting local data on issues that matter to them. We’re excited to embrace hyperlocal data like this — for our citizens’ health. Democratizing data and empowering others to advocate for better policies and actions with actionable data is what makes for a truly smart city!
