About This Project

The intention behind this website is to explore the idea of a “climate emergency infosite,” with information for understanding and action in face of climate risks, such as air quality, wildfire, drought, and flood. Our intention is to prioritize pragmatic, simple, and empathetic guidance that is actionable, convenient, and understandable. By pursuing this goal, we are adding stories and iterations to the effort to improve public communication of climate issues.

We chose to start by building an air quality information tool, focusing on the Front Range of Colorado.

Existing resources for accessing information about air quality have the following issues:

1) Data display is inconsistent.

Since the number of air quality indicators is relatively broad - BouldAir monitors nearly 10 pollutants - interpreting the many indicators can be challenging and therefore inconsistent. In addition, air quality readings vary within a city, either due to microclimates or issues in the systems of the sensors themselves. For the first iteration of this website, we used the following resources: fire.airnow.gov, aqicn.org, map.purpleair.com, and bouldair.com/NoCoFrontRange.htm. We did not include waqi.info and iqair.com due to less support for embedding.

2) Recommended actions are inconsistent or missing information.

Guidance can be contradictory. For example, on poor air quality days, people are requested to refrain from driving to avoid contributing pollutants to the air, but also to avoid riding a bicycle or walking. Suggestions to wear particulate masks when outside on poor air quality days should be standard.

Public health websites that do provide guidance generally do so in a list format. There is an opportunity to enhance the design of public health guidance to align with the standard method of communication used in the media field.

We notice that air quality safety guidance is missing integration with COVID protection measures. Specifically, N95 or KN95 masks can be effective for elevated particulate matter outside, in addition to preventing spread of SARS-CoV-2. In addition, the interaction between poor air quality and respiratory infection is well-documented.

Finally, filtration of ozone differs from particulate, with preliminary results showing that activated carbon are effective at removing 60-70% of ozone from air, while carbon-free filters remove 0% of the ozone (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, 2009). [1]

3) Air quality monitoring websites generally need improvement.

The amount of data collected and the complexity in collecting that data results in at least 5 sources of information, split between the public and private sector. The websites may not be accessible by all internet configurations, and the data may be incorrect due to technical errors in the system.

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[1] Fisk, W. J., Spears, M., Sullivan, D. P., & Mendell, M. (2009, September). Ozone removal by filters containing activated carbon: A pilot study. Proceedings of the Healthy Buildings 2009 Conference.