SCC-PG: Developing technological solutions to improve indoor air quality and thermal comfort in urban communities

该项目的目标是改善高危城市社区的室内空气质量和热舒适性。室内空气质量是租房者和房主最关心的住房健康问题，超过三分之一的租房者和四分之一的房主对灰尘、霉菌、潮湿和缺乏足够的通风表示担忧。美国环境保护局将室内空气污染物列为公众面临的五大环境风险之一，因为它们可能比室外污染物水平高出100倍。然而，目前传感器在空间和时间分辨率上的限制限制了准确预测室内空气质量的能力。这笔规划拨款将支持为室内空气质量预测的传感、建模、通信和可视化平台制定研究计划，纳入一系列利益相关者的意见-包括居民、活动家、地方政府政策制定者和监管机构。该项目将设在纽约市，初步研究将在两个社区进行：一个在南布朗克斯，另一个在哈莱姆。长期目标是建立一个技术框架，以对抗暴露在空气污染中的社会经济不平等，可以扩大规模，并在不同城市应用。计划中的实验将有助于确定影响参与该项目的社区的主要室内污染物，并有助于区分室外和室内污染物对室内空气质量的影响。这项工作还将确定城市形态和人类行为特征对室内宜居性所起的作用，并将允许测试各种传感和通信平台。最后，它将涉及试行一种数据可视化工具，该工具将向社区和公共卫生官员通报不安全的室内空气质量和温度状况，并建议适当的行动。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The goal of this project is to improve the indoor air quality and thermal comfort of at-risk urban communities. Indoor air quality is the leading housing health concern of both renters and homeowners with more than one in three renters and one in four homeowners expressing concerns over, for example, dust, mold, dampness, and lack of sufficient ventilation. The Environmental Protection Agency ranks indoor air pollutants amongst the top five environmental risks to the public as they can be up to 100 times higher than outdoor pollutant levels. However, current limitations in sensor spatial and temporal resolution have restricted the ability to accurately forecast indoor air quality. This planning grant will support the development of a research plan for a sensing, modeling, communication and visualization platform for forecasting indoor air quality incorporate input from a set of stakeholders—including, residents, activists, local government policy makers and regulators. The project will be based in New York City and the preliminary research will be conducted in two communities: one in the South Bronx and another in Harlem. The long-term aim is to establish a technological framework to combat socioeconomic inequities in exposure to air pollution that could be scaled up and applied across different cities. The planned experiments will help to identify the primary indoor polluatnts that impact the communities partnering on this project and will help to partition the impacts of outdoor and indoor pollutants on indoor air quality. The work will also identify the role played by urban morphological and human behavioral characteristics on indoor livability and will allow for testing of various sensing and communication platforms. Last, it will involve piloting a data visualization tool that will inform communities and public health officials about unsafe indoor air quality and temperature conditions and suggest appropriate actions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.