Google Maps Is Being Used To Track Air Pollution In Oakland and Other Cities (androidauthority.com)

The functionality of Google Maps is expanding to include air pollution levels. Depending on where you live, you will soon be able to see the specific air quality in your neighborhood. Oakland, California is the first city to have air quality information, but data should be released soon for the Los Angeles and Central Valley regions of California. Android Authority reports: In a blog post, Google says it has been working with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Aclima since 2015 on this project. Google Street View cars were equipped with devices from Aclima to monitor the levels of nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and black carbon in the city of Oakland, California. You can now see those modified Google Maps on the EDF website. The Google Maps that have this information show how pollution levels can change in Oakland based on specific locations, street activity, and more. The idea is that posting this data in an easy visual way will assist communities to campaign for better air quality standards in their neighborhoods to their local and state governments.

Comments

Impact on real estate prices will be interesting

[sodul]

The SF Bay Area housing prices are going up and up and everyone is happy with the weather and pollution seems relatively ok compared to other industrialized places. It will be interesting to see the impact on housing. I live in Sunnyvale and there is high density housing popping up near high traffic roads which means cities might be concentrating new inhabitants were there is more pollution. I live in a relatively quiet neighborhood but surrounded by major roads, and I got freaking planes from 5 airports flying over.

I'm hoping Google will map the area soon, after all a lot of their employees live around here.

Re:Leisurely first post

[negRo_slim]

Nah I got lost thinking how interesting this really is as I try and reconcile that with my utter distaste for Google and the way they have their fingers in so much personal, local, regional, national and international data.
They are just not a pleasant company anymore and I am so wary of anything they decide to do.

I wish they'd map the PM 2.5 levels

[wisebabo]

Isn't PM 2.5 one of the most important indicators of air quality? I mean whenever there's a news story about how bad the air quality is in Beijing (or more recently New Delhi), they're always citing the PM 2.5 level and how you can't trust the government readings but have to access the U.S. Embassy air monitoring stations there.

(For those who don't know PM 2.5 is the reading of the 2.5 micron particulate matter, particles so small they get deep into your lungs and cause bad things to happen like maybe cancer).

Why can't Google put a PM 2.5 sensor on their cars? Are they afraid they won't be able to get an accurate reading from a moving vehicle? (Doesn't seem to stop them with their other measurements). I've got a nice little sensor on my desk (Speck) that's small and low powered enough I've that about attaching it to a long distance drone to do a transect(?) mapping of the air quality of my city!

Unfortunately, this being Ho Chi Minh City, it would likely disappear in one fashion or another in short order :(

Re:I wish they'd map the PM 2.5 levels

[worf_mo]

The town I live in in northern Italy was once famous for its "clean and healthy air". That was a century ago - nowadays, PM readings are published on the local newspapers and their websites only during the low-tourism months, and official sensor stations are placed in strategically less-interesting locations. A few weeks ago I bought a couple of SDS011 sensors, and I plan to place them on my balconies, hook them each up to a an Arduino with an RS485 module and have the data stored into my InfluxDB (which I already use to store energy consumption and other apartment-related data), but I haven't had the time yet to wire everything together.

The problem I see with collecting PM2.5/PM10 values from a drone or any moving vehicle: you only get readings for a given area for a specific point in time. Some of these readings could be exceptionally high or low for a variety of reasons (heavy wind? burning building?). In order to have some conclusive data you want to collect it from the same place over a period of time.

If one prefers an already complete solution with instructions and downloadable code: a group in Stuttgart, Germany, created the project Luftdaten (text in German and Polish, only). The website describes how to easily create your own (stationary) internet-connected sensor with a NodeMCU and SDS011 sensor, and hook it up with their (free) service. The data is collected and can be shown on a map. There are a number of sensors placed by individuals in Europe, and even a few in the USA. Even though the number of sensors is low at the moment, if this project gains some traction it could provide some interesting data.

Re:I wish they'd map the PM 2.5 levels

[drinkypoo]

What we really need is many, many more weather/etc. monitoring stations, which return their data to a central location for processing. The company that makes that cheap enough for the masses to adopt will really move climate and weather science forward. Besides wind speed, rain fall, and insolation, PM2.5 is an obvious candidate for measurement.

Re:I wish they'd map the PM 2.5 levels

[drinkypoo]

You can't reasonably measure amount of precipitation with a camera, nor PM2.5 soot. Maybe PM10. Insolation you could get, but you'd need a calibration profile for each camera. And as they aged, you'd need new ones for literally each individual camera, not just for each model.

There is already a lot of interest in cheap weather stations, so that is a logical place to put the sensors.

out of date google maps

[Gronkers]

It seems google maps is really out of date on satellite views. Just hope reliable is this smog data going to be?