A fleet of Toyota Priuses equipped with sensors to detect greenhouse gases, particulate matter and other pollutants is monitoring air quality across the Bay Area.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District announced this month that the hybrids will collect block-by-block data from all nine Bay Area counties, spanning more than 5,000 square miles of public roads. The district will use data collected through this year and early 2021 to create hyper-local air quality maps. Those will be available to the public on the BAAQMD’s website starting later this year.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s fleet of low-emissions cars will measure air quality with a unit of sensors stored in the back. (Peter Arcuni/KQED)
The air district is partnering with technology company Aclima to outfit the mobile fleet with sensors that measure carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone and PM 2.5 fine particulate pollution, and analyze the data.
Air quality district executive officer Jack Broadbent says recent wildfires, climate change and federal rollbacks of emissions standards have created a need for more precise local air quality tracking.
“What we need now, more than ever, are facts,” Broadbent said, adding that his agency is going to use “new technologies and approaches to build upon our air quality data to better inform our actions and protect Bay Area residents.”
The district has 30 stationary air monitoring stations spread across the region. Data from these stations feeds into the continually updating federal AirNow map. But this data doesn’t reflect the differences in air quality across all Bay Area cities or neighborhoods.
A 2015 research study from UC Berkeley’s Intel labs and Google showed that pollution in West Oakland could vary significantly from block to block. For the study, the air quality district mounted air sensors to Google Street View cars. Air quality maps that use data from consumer air sensors, like Purple Air, have painted a similar picture in the Bay Area.
The air intake valve on one of the Air District’s new pollution monitoring cars. (Peter Arcuni/KQED)
While the BAAQMD’s new mobile fleet won’t post data in real time, it will offer a neighborhood-level view of air pollution.
“This new data will help us identify pollution hotspots in order to strengthen and target our actions to reduce emissions…partnering with local governments and communities to protect public health,” said Ranyee Chiang, the Air District’s director of meterology and measurement.
Broadbent says the project will give policymakers accurate data to “help drive the air quality and climate efforts well into the future.”
In August the district dispatched the first vehicles to the Richmond-San Pablo community. The fleet has expanded to San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. It will complete its rollout in the coming months.
Representatives from BAAQMD and Aclima say the Bay Area fleet will eventually number “dozens” of cars that measure air quality 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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