Citizens' Data for Air Pollution (CitiDAir)

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Air pollution has figured prominently as one of the environmental crises of the day. There is now a market in consumer air monitors, which makes pollution monitoring more accessible to the public than before. Consumer monitors are distinguished from the pollution monitors used by researchers in terms of cost (these can be many times cheaper than research instruments), user friendliness, and quality (there is great uncertainty about the long-term reliability and accuracy of these monitors). Because of the existing national monitoring stations for air pollution are relatively few, mathematical models are often used to fill in missing data. However, models still require ground-level calibration from monitors, so there is still a need for higher resolution monitoring across space and time for improving model estimates. Establishment of a high resolution monitoring network is still cost-prohibitive. Mobile monitoring is another potential way of obtaining this high resolution data. Citizens could be a form of mobile monitoring, and we will explore the feasibility of developing a campaign to measure air pollution across time and space with citizens as data collectors. We will also explore the possibility of using consumer air monitors to determine whether this effort could be citizen-led, rather than relying on researchers to supply monitoring equipment. We will also explore how people interact with the data collection process and the data they collect, as well as the benefits they receive from this activity, to better incorporate citizen science into future air pollution exposure research.