Google Straps Aclima Sensors To Street View Cars To Map Air Pollution

Eloking writes: Google and a San Francisco-based Aclima have equipped Google's Street View cars with environmental sensors in order to map urban air quality. The project aims to create high resolution maps of air quality across cities by measuring carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, Volatile Organic Compounds, and other pollutants. “We have a profound opportunity to understand how cities live and breathe in an entirely new way by integrating Aclima’s mobile sensing platform with Google Maps and Street View cars,” said Davida Herzl, co-founder and CEO of Aclima. “With more than half of the world’s population now living in cities, environmental health is becoming increasingly important to quality of life. Today we’re announcing the success of our integration test with Google, which lays the foundation for generating high resolution maps of air quality in cities.”

Comments

Re:Simpler?

[abies]

Real question is, will sensors be 3d printed?

Local CO2

[abies]

Does it really make sense to measure CO2 locally? Is it different between different areas of same city by magnitude bigger than measurement error? Won't transient sources (like large old truck driving in front of you while you take measurements) have a lot larger impact than other differences (middle of forest versus middle of non-congested road)?

I have seen arguments that it is ok to have CO2 measurement station on top of vulcano, because CO2 mixes so well, it won't be affected by vulcano emissions. But now we want to measure it on completely local level?

Re:Local CO2

[Noah Haders]

further, co2 isnt' an an air pollutant. it doesn't cause ozone, smog, bronchitis, heart disease or cancer. we all inhale it and exhale it every day. it's the new hotness but completely irrelevant when talking about air quality.

I would put air quality monitors at schools nationwide. that would be very relevant. also an effective way to drive policy, think of the children.

Re:Local CO2

[dywolf]

Global average maybe be 400ppm, but local concentration where I work, next to a very active runway, is ~600-700ppm.

Mexico City is famously known for its air pollution due to the fact its a very large city (one of largest in world), and located in a bowl with very little wind. this makes it ideal and popular for studying CO2 variance over the day/week/etc from city life. there's several papers on it. And they've found that early morning rush hour is when CO2 in the city peaks at ~435ppm. It then rises again in the evening but much smoother (not a spike) and lasts into the night before going back down to a low of ~375 around 2am. (makes sense, people are active once they get home, AC's are on, etc)

So I'm willing to bet the volcano anecdote someone told you is more than likely false.

Re:Local CO2

[WindBourne]

It is no more political reason then it would be political to measure the amount of rain that is falling.

Re:Local CO2

[drinkypoo]

Does it really make sense to measure CO2 locally?

Yes.

Is it different between different areas of same city by magnitude bigger than measurement error?

We'll find out! See, it makes sense. We'll learn.

I have seen arguments that it is ok to have CO2 measurement station on top of vulcano, because CO2 mixes so well, it won't be affected by vulcano emissions. But now we want to measure it on completely local level?

That's not the argument; before you criticize the argument, make sure you understand it. It's OK to put a CO2 measurement station on a volcano because from correlations (or not) from other instruments we understand how being on a volcano affects CO2 measurements.

Re:Local CO2

[jbmartin6]

The sentence in the summary is a bit ambiguous certainly. CO2 is measured as an aspect of air quality in a specific location, not because it is a pollutant in itself. Or if you like, a sound is not necessarily noise, but put a lot of sounds together and you get noise pollution.

Re:Local CO2

[cusco]

I have seen arguments that it is ok to have CO2 measurement station on top of vulcano, because CO2 mixes so well

If you're referring to Mauna Loa weather observatory, the reason you can get accurate CO2 measurements on top of that volcano is that the active vents are all 20+ miles south, and the trade winds come from the west. There hasn't been an active caldera on top of the mountains since some time during the last ice age. If you read the summary a little more thoroughly you might have noticed that they're also measuring a number of other chemicals besides just carbon dioxide.

Re:Local CO2

[drinkypoo]

further, co2 isnt' an an air pollutant. it doesn't cause ozone, smog, bronchitis, heart disease or cancer.

But increased levels of CO2 actually found in (some relatively extreme) workplaces in the USA do have significant negative health effects! Occupational CO2 exposure limits have been set in the United States at 0.5% (5000 ppm) for an 8-hour period.[88] At this level of CO2, International Space Station crew experienced headaches, lethargy, mental slowness, emotional irritation, and sleep disruption.[89] Studies in animals at 0.5% CO2 have demonstrated kidney calcification and bone loss after 8 weeks of exposure.[90] Another study of humans exposed in 2.5 hour sessions demonstrated significant effects on cognitive abilities at concentrations as low as 0.1% (1000ppm) CO2 likely due to CO2 induced increases in cerebral blood flow.[91] [...] Higher CO2 concentrations are associated with occupant health, comfort and performance degradation. ASHRAE Standard 62.1â"2007 ventilation rates may result in indoor levels up to 2,100 ppm above ambient outdoor conditions. Thus if the outdoor ambient is 400 ppm, indoor concentrations may reach 2,500 ppm with ventilation rates that meet this industry consensus standard. Concentrations in poorly ventilated spaces can be found even higher than this (range of 3,000 or 4,000). Keep in mind that levels under 5,000 ppm can cause negative health effects; that's just the level at which our government says you have to do something about it.

It is highly relevant what CO2 levels are like in our cities, and the things you said are completely irrelevant to that fact.

Re:Local CO2

[PPH]

CO2 is plant food. Every time I fire up the SUV, I just think of all the starving children in China that I'm feeding.

Re:Local CO2

[Noah Haders]

fine. i bet the co2 level outside at street level is never more than 10% higher than up in the sky. the things you describe are acute effects. in that vein, you could put carbon monoxide sensors in cars in case anybody tries to off themselves using tailpipe gas. when people talk about outdoor air pollution they are talking about chronic effects like i just described.

Re:Local CO2

[Anonymous Coward]

5000 ppm CO2 is an order of magnitude higher than you can find outdoors in any city in the world. Do you think Google cars are going to be driving around in poorly ventilated spaces? Me either. Monitoring CO2 levels in cities is completely irrelevant in terms of outdoor air quality.

Re:Local CO2

[Noah Haders]

What's especially weird, if they're looking for dirty air, why are they starting in Denver then going to sf? The two most relevant cities are LA and Houston.

Re:Local CO2

[pipingguy]

Nice attempted derail. Why is CO2 a "pollutant" while O2 and N2 are not?

Re:Local CO2

[WindBourne]

N2 does not effect anything. It is neutral
Where is O2 pouring into the atmosphere at a rate of more than 100x what nature produces? If it did, then yes, it WOULD be a pollutant.

Nice BSing for yourself.

Re:Local CO2

[pipingguy]

CO2 "pouring into" the atmosphere at 100X rate more than nature, huh?

Okaaay...carry on.

Re:Local CO2

[LunaticTippy]

Denver is an excellent choice for monitoring real time pollution data. Local geography and weather patterns form persistent inversion layers that trap pollution, resulting in routine air quality warnings. The bay area is interesting due to vastly differing conditions at different parts of the area.

Re:Local CO2

[Jane Q. Public]

It is no more political reason then it would be political to measure the amount of rain that is falling.

Utter nonsense. Even if you assume that CO2 is a "pollutant" (and that's a pretty huge assumption not backed by actual science), it wouldn't have any effect locally unless large areas were covered with hundreds of thousands of PPM. And then it would be easy to tell, because -- the only serious local effect possible -- people and animals would be keeling over en masse.

Rain, on the other hand, has immediate and very local effects.

And as for

pouring into the atmosphere at a rate of more than 100x what nature produces

... man, go back to elementary school. That hasn't happened, isn't happening, and isn't going to happen.

Re:Local CO2

[Jane Q. Public]

The sentence in the summary is a bit ambiguous certainly. CO2 is measured as an aspect of air quality in a specific location, not because it is a pollutant in itself. Or if you like, a sound is not necessarily noise, but put a lot of sounds together and you get noise pollution.

Nice try, but no. You're comparing the feel of apples to the smell of oranges.

In anything like a real-world outdoor scenario (see the other post on this page about Mexico City), CO2 levels aren't going to vary enough to have much of an affect on anything locally.

So lumping it together with "pollutants" that do makes no sense at all.

Re:Local CO2

[khayman80]

pouring into the atmosphere at a rate of more than 100x what nature produces

... man, go back to elementary school. That hasn't happened, isn't happening, and isn't going to happen. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-07-31]

Yes it is. As the NAS explains on page 6 here:

"In nature, CO2 is exchanged continually between the atmosphere, plants and animals through photosynthesis, respiration, and decomposition, and between the atmosphere and ocean through gas exchange. A very small amount of CO2 (roughly 1% of the emission rate from fossil fuel combustion) is also emitted in volcanic eruptions. This is balanced by an equivalent amount that is removed by chemical weathering of rocks."

So natural CO2 emissions are balanced, and our fossil fuel emissions are roughly 100x faster than volcanic emissions. That's why "actual science" shows that our current CO2 emissions rate is unprecedented over the last 300 million years.

And if you read the rest of that NAS document, you'd discover that "actual science" shows that our unprecedentedly rapid CO2 emissions are a cause for concern.

Re: Local CO2

[WindBourne]

So, you have not been reading real research and just get your news from faux and kook brothers?

Re: Local CO2

[pipingguy]

You should try to not be so frightened of things but I can tell that you probably just enjoy using the climate boogeyman as a tool.

Re:Local CO2

[WindBourne]

LOL.
Again, another far right winger that refuses to accept science. Not only does science show that man-made CO2 is far more than 100x nature, but ppl ARE falling over due to the pollution. As to CO2 killing them, it continues to get thinned out so that it does not kill them directly. However, elevated CO2 causes faster heart beat and breathing, which will make ppl living in CHina (or close to any coal plants), breath in many more pollutants.

You know, I am convinced that it is extremists on both sides, like you on the right, and others on the left, that are killing America, if not the world. Neither of you accept science. How many on the left refuse to accept that nuke plants are safe? None. How many accept that the numbers prove that AE can not be done in time to stop CO2 (therefor we NEED nukes)? None.
There there are fools like you that refuse to accept the science about AGW. Hell, the fact that you think that nature spits out more CO2 than does mankind makes you even more foolish than the far left. It is PURE FACT that we are putting out more Co2 than does nature. I mean this is directly measured.

Re: Local CO2

[WindBourne]

climate boogey man? Afraid of it? Nope.
Just accept the fact that it is a real issue rather than be too afraid/stupid of dealing with issues.

Re:Local CO2

[pipingguy]

It's really difficult to reason with those who have emoted themselves into a position, but at least you gave it a try. It's always amusing to hear them cry science! as if everyone who disagrees with them is a moron. How many of the five tactics below have we seen repeated ad nauseum from the climate doomers over the past 20 years or so?

“Theorists of propaganda have identified five basic rules:

1. The rule of simplification: reducing all data to a single confrontation between ‘Good and Bad’, ‘Friend and Foe’.

2. The rule of disfiguration: discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies.

3. The rule of transfusion: manipulating the consensus values of the target audience for one’s own ends.

4. The rule of unanimity: presenting one’s viewpoint as if it were the unanimous opinion of all right-thinking people: drawing the doubting individual into agreement by the appeal of star performers, by social pressure, and by ‘psychological contagion’.

5. The rule of orchestration: endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations.”

In no way have those who have made endless extraordinary claims provided any extraordinary evidence. It's precise (but not accurate), "sophisticated" models and the precautionary principal all the way down, while consuming government grant money at an unprecedented pace.

Re:Local CO2

[drinkypoo]

fine. i bet the co2 level outside at street level is never more than 10% higher than up in the sky.

I prefer data to what you're willing to bet on. Luckily, someone is going to go forth and gather it regardless of what you think, and we'll find out whether you're right or not.

Re:Local CO2

[Noah Haders]

I'm pretty sure I'm right. I don't need "data" to back me up. Hint, data just the plural of datum, which is just a a single number.

Re:Local CO2

[drinkypoo]

I'm pretty sure I'm right.

Yes, I can see that.

I don't need "data" to back me up.

Unless you want anyone with a brain to care what you think.

Hint, data just the plural of datum, which is just a a single number.

Oh, so we only need one data point to make any decision ever?

Re:Local CO2

[drinkypoo]

5000 ppm CO2 is an order of magnitude higher than you can find outdoors in any city in the world.

Nobody said otherwise.

Do you think Google cars are going to be driving around in poorly ventilated spaces?

We'll find out soon enough just how much CO2 lingers. It's heavier than air, you know.

Monitoring CO2 levels in cities is completely irrelevant in terms of outdoor air quality.

Not only is that wrong, but the goal is to map "urban air quality", not just "outdoor air quality". RTFA, HTH, HAND.

P.S. If you had anything worthwhile to say, you'd have logged in.

Re:Local CO2

[Noah Haders]

I think instead of relying on "data" which are just numbers, you should ask somebody who is an expert in the field, like me.

Re:Local CO2

[drinkypoo]

I think instead of relying on "data" which are just numbers, you should ask somebody who is an expert in the field, like me.

Oh yeah, I really want to know what "Noah Haders" has to say about... anything. The only identity you've provided is that of a Slashdot troll. No one has any reason to believe anything you say. I certainly don't believe you're an expert at anything but trolling.

Re:Local CO2

[Noah Haders]

oh yeah totally. then why do i have so many modded up +5 comments? it's because i contribute my expertise to the community. be careful when throwing around words like troll, drinky-poo. you know what they say, i'm rubber, you're glue...

Re:Local CO2

[drinkypoo]

oh yeah totally. then why do i have so many modded up +5 comments?

Logical fallacy: appeal to popularity. But I'm willing to bet I've got orders of magnitude more Score: 5 comments than you do in any case.

Re:Local CO2

[Noah Haders]

Surprise surprise, yes you do. You have 2^9 and I have 2^5. Sock puppets?

Re:Local CO2

[Jane Q. Public]

So your definition of "pollutant" rules out well-mixed gases?

No. Try reading what I wrote again:

"... CO2 levels aren't going to vary enough to have much of an affect on anything locally. So lumping it together with "pollutants" that do makes no sense at all.

Re:Local CO2

[khayman80]

Obama: "sea level rise" is "hitting ... across the country". Absolute bullshit. Sea has been rising at exactly the same rate for 300 years. [Lonny Eachus, 2015-08-03]

Absolute bullshit. Once again, I did the math by calculating trends and accelerations for Church and White 2011 reconstructed sea level data. This PDF was made using my R code which accounts for autocorrelation- the red lines are 2 sigma uncertainties. The trends and accelerations all end at 2009.5.

If the sea "has been rising at exactly the same rate for 300 years" then the estimated trends on page 1 should have exactly the same value regardless of the starting year. But that's not true. More recent trends are higher than trends starting in the 1880s.

The second page also fits an acceleration term to those sea level data. If the sea "has been rising at exactly the same rate for 300 years" then those accelerations should be zero or at least average to zero. But that's not true. Every single best-fit acceleration is positive. Using the entire dataset, the acceleration since ~1880 is positive and statistically significant.

But as usual Jane/Lonny Eachus just makes up numbers to support his baseless accusations rather than actually doing the math.

Re:Local CO2

[khayman80]

Just to be clear, I meant that the trends and accelerations are calculated over periods which all end at 2009.5.

Re:Local CO2

[Jane Q. Public]

So your definition of "pollutant" includes well-mixed gases?

You seem to have a reading comprehension problem. Whatever. Your problem, not mine.

Re:Local CO2

[Jane Q. Public]

I made my statements already. Any answer to your question is either already there, or no concern of mine. If you don't understand my comments, that's just too bad.

I have no interest in answering a question that was (a) already answered, or (b) not related to my actual point.

Re:Simpler?

[DigiShaman]

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to mount sensors on stop lights or buildings

Biased much?! Because sniffing for C02 will be at the highest when cars accelerate from a red light to green. And that's not a true representative amount as such concentrations will dissipate into the atmosphere. And if you're going to take samples of a downtown area like NY, it's preferred that you measure indoor air quality for traces gases generated from the outside anyways to validate overall concentration that effect daily health; most people stay in climate control surroundings in the city.

"We have a profound opportunity to distort."

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Terrible idea. This varies depending on time of year, did it just rain, etc. What about calibration tests?

It is useless for comparison between cities, or even as a representative number for a particular city.

Re:"We have a profound opportunity to distort."

[dywolf]

Because none of these people ever thought of that before.
Ever.

Thank god they had random guy on the internet to save them from themselves, those silly smart people.

Re:"We have a profound opportunity to distort."

[gsslay]

Well it's a good question. How can they possibly account for this and get meaningful figures? What if the google car just happens to be driving behind a particularly smoky truck on an otherwise pristine clear-aired road ? How will they know to adjust their figures accordingly?

It such an obvious flaw in the plan that you'd think they'd mention how they'll handle it.

Re:"We have a profound opportunity to distort."

[WindBourne]

BS.
Monitoring, and standardizing, has been done for the last 30 years on these instruments.
By having them on trucks and measuring the local areas, it gives a better idea of WHERE the various pollution occurs from.

Re:"We have a profound opportunity to distort."

[drinkypoo]

Terrible idea. This varies depending on time of year, did it just rain, etc.

Yes, and that sort of information is also being logged.

What about calibration tests?

You really think they don't know more about that than you do? You must really think you're fucking great, and much better than all those people who work for google and aclima.

It is useless for comparison between cities,

No, no it isn't, but the space below is too small to explain how idiotic that statement was.

or even as a representative number for a particular city.

They will probably not produce a single number result at this stage, although with later comparison between cities, a meaningful single number result will be possible.

Re:"We have a profound opportunity to distort."

[afgam28]

We already city-level air quality indicies that let us do comparisons between cities - http://www.airnow.gov/

Anyway, it's not a hard problem to solve. Street View cars already revisit the same streets they've been to before, so eventually they'd collect enough data to be able to average out those sources of variability.

This looks more like it would be useful for comparing neighborhoods within a city. How much worse is the air in the industrial districts compared to the residential ones? What is the difference in air quality in each of San Francisco's microclimates?

But traffic is a large source of solution, so that would bias their data. It would be cool if they strapped these sensors onto the Street View backpacks that they use to map hiking trails, and get data on the air quality along walking paths in parks and other areas that can't be driven to.

Re:"We have a profound opportunity to distort."

[spitzak]

Hey maybe they should put a camera on the Google car! Then you could see if you were following a truck. Gee I wonder if they can add some cameras to them...

Re:"We have a profound opportunity to distort."

[Ungrounded Lightning]

It will also vary depending on the performance of the vehicles immediately ahead of, oncoming-and-passing, or crossing ahead of the street view vehicle. Especially the first: The sensor will be running in the exhaust plumes of the vehicles ahead of the street view car, so the map will be a very non-random sampling.

On the other hand, the partculate and "volatile organic compounds" sensors will produce some very interesting data. The latter is what the federal standards call "unburned hydrocarbons" when emitted from an engine, and the output of modern engines is vanishingly small. But many species of evergreen trees emit them in enormous quantity, as part of their ongoing chemical warfare against insects that eat trees. That's what the blue haze around pine-forested mountains (such as "the Smoky Mountains") is about. You can literally destroy (by extreme and long-term contamination) an automotive conformance test cell (the room where they test the car's emissions), requiring it to be torn out and rebuilt, by placing a Christmas tree in it overnight.

I expect some towns in remote, forested, mountain areas, where people move "for their health" and "for the clean, fresh, air", to get a rude awakening. B-)

But I doubt it will affect the extremely tight standards for automobile engines - except maybe to cause a flap that tightens them further. These days many engines are so clean that running then can IMPROVE the air quality in some places (such as portions of Los Angeles, with topography that created such a thermal inversion that a single settler's campfire could leave the whole valley filled with smoke for a day or more) by inhaling and burning far more hydrocarbon and particulate pollutants than they create.

Unbarked dog

[ThatsNotPudding]

Don't expect these sensors to be attached to the Google buses, as Googlers are part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Re:Unbarked dog

[jfdavis668]

Yeah, they should get rid of the buses and have everyone go back to driving cars.

great idea

[slashmydots]

In China, you can improve the report by smoking a cigarette 1 foot away from the sensor.

Hopefully, they'll have signs

[Mr. Droopy Drawers]

Hoping to be able to follow them in my '68 Dodge Polara convertible. Is the sensor in the front or back? Want to make sure they get the full effect.

I love watching the gas gauge move down on acceleration!

Re:Simpler?

[cusco]

A sensor mounted on a building gives a sample of one location. Mounted on a car taking one sample per minute gives 480 geo-located samples that can be correlated to photos of the surroundings at that exact point in time in an 8 hour day. A map with one data point is pretty useless unless you happen to work or live in that building.

But, will it include their emissions?

[WindBourne]

Google should only be using electric cars for this mapping efforts. They have the money, and can buy large amounts of them from Nissan, or even Tesla. And if Google would invest into Tesla, I would bet that they could get Tesla to produce a small electric truck for them. In fact, it should be on a sub-compact frame and could be sold to utilities and google.

Remember the Delightful Smell of Bread Ethanol?

[glennrrr]

Driving by a bakery used to be such a treat. But dang if regulators don't hate volatile hydrocarbons.

OCO2 and shortly, OCO3

[WindBourne]

I agree about CO2. Far better is the use of satellites to study CO2. And in fact, OCO2 is making a mockery, as well as shocking, of the numbers that are being displayed.

However, the vehicle is measuring many other items. As such, they will find out GENERALLY, what is going on.

truck based CO2 monitoring vs. OCO2

[WindBourne]

The CO2 monitoring is useful for finding major sources of LOCAL pollution, but, it really can not deal well with large 'Whiffs' of it.
OTOH, OCO2 is already showing where the REAL CO2 comes from, and is making a mockery of the numbers that the far left comes up with. Keep in mind that CO2 numbers are predicated on various items:
1) the first is via monitoring. That works well if you have monitors all over the nation. This is used heavily for doing calcs in the western nations. However, when monitors are NOT all over the nations, then you have an issue.
2) calculations based on gov. supplied numbers. This is what is used in most of the world, in particular, for China. THis fails since nearly ALL govs. CHEAT on these numbers.
3) Space based monitoring. OCO2 is now showing that numbers are wrong.

So, while I would not fully trust the numbers from Google, they will give an idea of where bad emissions are from. OTOH, Sats will give a better idea of which area CO2 is coming from, as well as being sucked up.

Thankfully, OCO3 is now being worked on, and will give a much better idea of where CO2 emissions are coming from within locations.

Re:Simpler?

[rhazz]

The article says the data will be combined with data from the EPA's stationary sensors, but I'm not sure how a one-time drive-by reading, taken at different times in different locations, could be useful compared to a long term data set.

Scary

[ssufficool]

What decisions will be driven by these data? What are the controls, other samples used to validate the data?

I fear that the data will be skewed by having this sensor on a car in traffic and then that fact not disclosed with the data when it is used to drive policy.