Project Outline

We’re all impacted by our environment, especially local climate.

Speculation and debate rages around what is changing, what is causing the impact, and how much.

But now our technology is starting to reach the point where we can make reasonably reliable sensing systems that can measure and record what is happening on a much finer geographic resolution.

• Purple Air
• air quality egg
• Sensor.community

This is starting to be recognized by local and national governments.

For example N.W.T. government is distributing air quality sensors for free:

• CBC overview article
• the pilot project AQ map from UNBC
• some info re the MSC and ECCC pilot project

These projects aim to augment official monitoring stations. Why not just expand these stations? Truly accurate and reliable chemical monitoring is expensive and time consuming; many sensors are damaged in the act of sensing, may be affected by other chemical species, and thus need to be monitored and maintained. But they can act as a reference/calibration point for the less accurate/reliable/costly sensors that are becoming available!

• see notes on UNBC pilot site re correction factors
• see map notes ("hamburger menu") on this sensor.community project

Thankfully the collected data has been made publicly available:

• B.C. Air Quality
• Latest B.C. AQ Map
  • Courtenay Elementary Station
• B.C. Air Data Archive
  • Georgia Strait Air Zone
• Canadian NAPS program

Apparently most live Canadian data is pushed to the US AirNow database; there does not appear to be a Federal Canadian equivalent. AirNow interactive map.

IMPORTANT Canada has created it’s own scale, focused on human impact, called the Air Quality Health Index. It’s very different to the US AQI index!

Observations

• data is available
• presentation is sub-par
• analysis tools are non existent

i.e. all tools focus on displaying the current data, have no, or limited ability to display historical data, and no facility to compare time periods.