Crowd-sourcing urban air-quality in developing countries through open source technologies

Abstract

Outdoor air pollution now contributes annually to over 3.2 million premature deaths worldwide and is among the top health risk factors. Urban air pollution is on course to become the top environmental cause of mortality by 2050 - greater than the effects of dirty water and lack of sanitation. This risk is especially high in developing countries, where it is often difficult or expensive to obtain air quality data. This paper outlines the initial development of a system for mapping crowd-sourced air quality data in urban environments in developing countries. This system includes a (1) low cost wearable air quality monitor and (2) a mapping and data visualization web application for use in urban settings in developing countries. Based on open source hardware and software, the air quality monitor is composed of an Arduino microcontroller and sensor shields and collects real-time geographically explicit air quality data, with data storage on removable memory. The mapping and data visualization web application uses javascript functions and Google Maps API to visualize the paths travelled and the intensity of ozone and particulate matter as a heat map.