CleanAirNowKC: Building Community Power by Improving Data Accessibility

As cities continue to grow globally, air pollution is increasing at an alarming rate, causing a significant negative impact on public health. One way to affect the negative impact is to regulate the producers of such pollution through policy implementation and enforcement. CleanAirNowKC (CAN-KC) is an environmental justice organization based in Kansas City (KC), Kansas. As part of their organizational objectives, they have to date deployed nine PurpleAir air quality sensors in different locations about which the community has expressed concern. In this paper, we have implemented an interactive map that can help the community members to monitor air quality efficiently. The system also allows for reporting and tracking industrial emissions or toxic releases, which will further help identify major contributors to pollution. These resources can serve an important role as evidence that will assist in advocating for community-driven just policies to improve the air quality regulation in Kansas City.

Rifat Ara Proma, Matthew Sumpter, Humberto Lugo, Elizabeth Friedman, Khandaker Tasnim Huq, and Paul Rosen. CleanAirNowKC: Building Community Power by Improving Data Accessibility. IEEE Workshop on Visualization for Social Good (VIS4Good), 2021.

@inproceedings{proma2021,
  title = {{CleanAirNowKC}: Building Community Power by Improving Data Accessibility},
  author = {Proma, Rifat Ara and Sumpter, Matthew and Lugo, Humberto and Friedman,
    Elizabeth and Huq, Khandaker Tasnim and Rosen, Paul},
  booktitle = {IEEE Workshop on Visualization for Social Good (VIS4Good)},
  pages = {1--5},
  year = {2021},
  abstract = {As cities continue to grow globally, air pollution is increasing at an
    alarming rate, causing a significant negative impact on public health. One way to affect
    the negative impact is to regulate the producers of such pollution through policy
    implementation and enforcement. CleanAirNowKC (CAN-KC) is an environmental justice
    organization based in Kansas City (KC), Kansas. As part of their organizational
    objectives, they have to date deployed nine PurpleAir air quality sensors in different
    locations about which the community has expressed concern. In this paper, we have
    implemented an interactive map that can help the community members to monitor air
    quality efficiently. The system also allows for reporting and tracking industrial
    emissions or toxic releases, which will further help identify major contributors to
    pollution. These resources can serve an important role as evidence that will assist in
    advocating for community-driven just policies to improve the air quality regulation in
    Kansas City.}
}