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度。室内空气质量是租房者和房主的主要住房健康问题，超过三分之一的租房者和四分之一的房主表示担心灰尘，霉菌，潮湿和缺乏足够的通风。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，因为它们的污染水平可能比室外高出100倍。然而，目前传感器空间和时间分辨率的限制限制了准确预测室内空气质量的能力。这项规划拨款将支持一项研究计划的发展，该计划旨在建立一个用于预测室内空气质量的传感、建模、通信和可视化平台，并将一系列参与者的意见纳入其中，包括居民、活动家、地方政府决策者和监管机构。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，以消除暴露于空气污染中的社会经济不平等现象，该框架可以扩大并适用于不同的城市。计划中的实验将有助于确定影响该项目合作社区的主要室内污染物，并将有助于划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的作用，并将允许测试各种传感和通信平台。最后，它将涉及一个数据可视化工具的试点，该工具将告知社区和公共卫生官员不安全的室内空气质量和温度条件，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知识价值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.