Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: Investigating Environmental Justice and Managing Air Pollution Risk through Participatory Sensing

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

Some people have turned to non- governmental air quality monitoring networks (NAQMNs) to assess their air pollution exposures. NAQMNs include low-cost, networked air pollution sensors hosted at homes and schools that display real-time pollutant concentrations on publicly accessible websites. The self-organizing nature of NAQMNs may produce a highly uneven spatial distribution of sensors, and barriers to acquiring sensors may systemically disenfranchise some social groups.

This is important because air pollution exposure causes negative health effects and exposures tend to vary based on race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. The overall goal of this project is to assess how families with children with asthma use the sensors while expanding the Salt Lake County, Utah NAQMN. Without equal access to air pollution information, the public cannot stay adequately informed, which in turn may affect their perceptions and actions concerning pollution exposure and health.

This project is relevant to environmental policy nationally, and in Salt Lake County, which often exceeds national pollution standards. Adding 20 sensors in areas of greatest need will enhance equity in Salt Lake County’s NAQMN. The researcher recruits a student from a historically underrepresented group as a research assistant and disseminates findings via multiple outlets, including by publishing articles in top-tier journals and sharing findings with NAQMN managers, study participants, and policymakers.

This project aims to: (1) assess socio-spatial inequalities in the distribution of a NAQMN in Salt Lake County; and (2) use those results to select local environmental justice communities of concern with sparse NAQMN coverage in order to examine how participatory air quality sensing shapes residents’ understandings and decisions. The research first uses statistical analyses to assess whether sensors in the NAQMN (n=249) are unevenly distributed with respect to race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status at the census tract level (n=236) and identifies tracts in ‘high need’ of sensors.

Next, the researcher recruits 20 families without sensors who live in the ‘high need’ areas and 10 families that already have sensors as a comparison group. He provides sensors connected to the NAQMN to the 20 families without sensors and all families have a child with asthma. He conducts pre-interviews, 16 weekly surveys, and post-interviews to investigate how participants understand and manage air pollution risks with the use of a sensor.

While others have examined environmental justice implications of air pollution, few have assessed the environmental justice implications of a NAQMN. The methodological approach provides a transferable model for assessing NAQMNs elsewhere. This project advances understandings about the process of democratizing public access to air pollution information as well as how citizen science can inform decision making.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.