CIVIC - FA Track A: Pilot - Community Resilience through Engaging, Actionable, Timely, High - REsolution Air Quality Information (CREATE - AQI)

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Over 137 million people in the US live in areas with unhealthy levels of outdoor air pollution. Children and student athletes are particularly vulnerable to elevated air pollution levels because their lungs are not fully developed, and they have more rapid breathing rates. Current air quality forecasts and measurements fail to protect them from critical air quality hazards, like dust and wildfire smoke. Utah is a prime example of a place with serious air quality challenges driven by wildfire smoke and wind-blown dust. The geographic extent and severity of these events is difficult to assess because State-run monitoring stations are sparse and many rural counties have no means of air quality measurement. Utah’s state and media outlets only provide air-quality forecasts for 12 of 29 counties and these have low spatial resolution, are only for a 24-hour period, and are limited to ozone and fine particulate matter (i.e., 2.5 micron size fraction). They do not include dust nor do they account for the spatial variability of the pollution. Utah’s current forecasting framework is not automated and requires input from expert staff. Furthermore, due to Utah’s complex terrain, local air-quality forecasts and air quality maps provided by federal agencies can be highly inaccurate because they are designed for the entire continental U.S. and do not account for microclimates or atmospheric vagaries caused by elevation changes and rough terrane. This project provides high resolution air quality data through innovative modeling and data gathering mechanisms and approaches. It engages the community, in particular student athletic coaches, to create neighborhood-scale, actionable air quality information to help reduce exposure to air pollutant hazards, particularly for children and youth participating in athletics. In addition to its broader impact of protecting public health, the research will make advances in automated air-quality forecasting, community-scale air quality sensing networks, and science communication.The CIVIC Innovation Challenge is a collaboration with Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security, and the National Science Foundation. This Civic Innovation Challenge project will co-develop with stakeholders at the neighborhood-scale, actionable air quality information to help reduce exposure to air pollutant hazards including wildfire smoke and dust, particularly for children. It will build off the project team's existing air-quality sensing and forecasting infrastructure as well as strong civic partnerships it has developed to collect and evaluate the necessary measurements. The forecasting tools, effective message-delivery strategies, and quality metrics will help the community protect children, athletes, and the public in Utah from air-quality hazards. The project will expand the University of Utah’s existing air quality sensing infrastructure by adding new sensing capabilities for dust and extending the geographic coverage of its innovative air quality sensing network. These data are then integrated with existing meteorological, dust transport, wildfire smoke transport, air-quality forecasting models to generate automated, high, spatial resolution, air quality forecasts. This will be done through the involvement of university researchers from the University of Utah, school system decision makers (e.g., preK-12 administrators and athletic trainers), and governing bodies (the Utah Division of Air Quality, Health Department and Utah High School Activities Association). This team approach and the innovative combination of data and creation of data visualization tools with an easily accessible interface will result in a high-resolution (i.e., 4-km horizontal resolution and hourly readings from sensors), automated system that produces numerical forecasts of air pollution hazards, in particular those related to inversions, wildfire smoke, and dust. The system will operationalize and integrate into the State air quality system a new, cost-effective, air quality sensor to monitor and predict serious dust levels and other particulate airborne matter that can be visualized through an interactive dashboard to understand when dangerous levels are present.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.