Web Tools for Sensor Data
Presented by: Graeme Carvlin, Puget Sound Clean Air Agency
Summary: At the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, one of our main goals is to characterize and communicate air quality with the active participation of the public. Lower cost air sensors are now a large part of that discussion and we are interested in communicating their benefits, drawbacks, and how to use them to get meaningful data.
To this end, we offer air sensors to individuals and groups through our air sensor lending program (https://pscleanair.gov/539/Air-Quality-Sensors). First, we contact the applicant and discuss their air quality concerns. This discussion is often enough to answer their questions or point them towards appropriate resources. If sensors would help answer their question, they are given the sensors along with documentation on how to operate them and interpret the data.
We often have members of the public ask us why the sensor closest to them is reading much higher than our reference monitors. Purple Air and other sensor manufacturers’ data displays often show the public uncalibrated and unfiltered sensor data. To lower the barriers to correctly interpreting sensor data, I have developed a map that combines reference monitors with quality controlled and calibrated Purple Air data (Sensor Map: map.pscleanair.org and description page: https://pscleanair.gov/570/Air-Quality-Sensor-Map). The Sensor Map has a Health view, which shows a health-based PM estimate, and an Instant view, which shows 1-min data and is useful during air quality events, such as wildfires.
One of the biggest challenges for community groups who want to work with sensors is taking the sensor data and creating a summary report. The Community Reporter is a tool I developed to ingest raw data from a variety of air sensors; QC and average the data; and create a summary report with graphs, maps, and text. It is our hope that these tools and the discussions that arise from their use will help the public interpret air sensor data and answer their air quality questions.