OPENAIR – Tackling air pollution at the local level

Transcript

My name is Peter Runcie. I'm the project lead for the OpenAir project. The OpenAir project came about in 2020, just after the 2019–20 bushfires, when communities all around the state and the country were facing lots of smoke.

We sent a survey out to all of the councils in New South Wales asking two questions. The first question was: do you have issues with air quality, and if so, what sort? The second question was about technology—asking councils if they were aware of the availability of low-cost environmental sensors and whether they knew how to use them.

Almost all councils said they had problems with bushfire smoke, which is understandable. But many also reported issues with transportation-related air pollution from road, rail or airports, industrial pollution from industrial zones, agricultural burning, dust from mines and railway lines, and problems with heat. There was a range of different issues from different councils.

Regarding technology, most councils said they had heard about these low-cost sensors but didn’t know how to choose the right one, how to install it, what to do with the data, or how to use that data to make interventions in the community and improve outcomes for their people.

The project had several objectives. The first was to bring together councils interested in working with these new sensing technologies. Another key aim was to establish a growing community of practice. This is where the New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment played a really important role.

NSW DPE runs a regulatory network of air quality sensors in New South Wales and is the foremost authority on ambient air quality sensing. They recognised the importance of these technologies and wanted to step in with OpenAir, take leadership, and show that local governments can be brought together. We see OpenAir as the beginning of a much longer-term process of community of practice building.

[Visuals: Footage of Parramatta Square and Church Street, showing busy pedestrian areas and new developments.]

Sameer Pandey (City of Parramatta): We pride ourselves on being a smart city. Parramatta Square is one of those areas where there has been massive development in the past few years. Church Street is also an area of major change, both with very high pedestrian traffic. These were obvious choices for us to install sensors and monitor air quality.

The data we collect from the sensors is shared with the NSW Government, helping us manage the city better. There is also collaboration with other councils, forming a network where we share and discuss data and how it will impact our communities to improve quality of life.

Ingo Koernicke (Sutherland Shire Council): One of the great opportunities of being involved with the OpenAir Project was that it gave council the chance to investigate local air pollution. In the Sydney metropolitan area, air pollutants have generally been stable or in decline except for two key pollutants: particulates and ozone. Particulates are like fine dusts that can easily get trapped in your lungs and bloodstream, with serious health impacts.

Bushfires, hazard reduction burns, smoke from wood-fuelled heaters, and vehicular emissions—especially diesels—are all sources. Because Sutherland Shire is on a bush interface, it’s subjected to bushfires and hazard reduction burns. You’d expect that smoke and particulates would collect in the river valleys more than in the ridge areas where our urban areas are.

To measure that, we’ve used sensors from the OpenAir program to test the hypothesis. We’ve located air monitoring sensors in the valley areas, where we think there’s a higher risk to our communities from particulates. The data from these sensors will confirm that or provide other insights.

We have two sensors—one in the Woronora River Valley, one in the Hacking River Valley—and as a contrast, one at Miranda, so we can compare environments and see how topography and traffic volumes affect air quality.

By developing a network of monitors around our shire, we’ll be able to target responses to air quality in particular areas. There are also many applications around transport, such as building arguments for removing cars from certain areas, electrifying public transport fleets, and other local interventions to improve air quality.

Heather Stevens (City of Newcastle): From where I’m standing, Newcastle is home to the world’s largest coal port, and up to 40 trains come through here every day carrying tonnes of coal to the port. We know there’s a high level of coal dust in our city—in residents’ houses and backyards—but we don’t yet know where it’s from. It could be from coal trains or stockpiles. We hope this project will help quantify where coal dust is coming from and under what conditions.

Installing sensors across our local government area was complicated—they’re finicky machines, needing to avoid too much shadow, vandalism, and be relevant to the source (coal rail lines and stockpiles). We found an innovative solution: our swimming pools are nicely spaced and close to where coal trains pass through, so we installed sensors at all our inland and coastal pools, plus one extra next to a busy rail line.

There are many challenges in installing a local air quality system. Council staff don’t usually have the resources or expertise for such technical processes, so we used funding from the Department of Planning and Environment to engage the University of Newcastle. The university provided a PhD scholarship, and that student is handling the technical elements needed for this project.

Mitchell Aafjes (PhD student): At the end of my master’s degree, I wanted to continue my education, so I approached my supervisor, Dr Heather Stevens. She had a project through OpenAir, installing sensors around Newcastle and monitoring coal dust.

The City of Newcastle Council bought nine Cyplex TickTock sensors. We chose these because they’re easy to install and measure many variables we want to research: particulate matter 2.5, particulate matter 10, wind direction, wind speed, humidity, temperature, and more. These variables will be used for my research and by council.

For this project, I’m answering research questions about local air pollution in Newcastle and helping council achieve their industry goals. These low-cost sensor technologies are accessible and understandable for community members, opening up citizen science and what we call citizen sensing.

This has been demonstrated by Lake Macquarie City Council, who ran a citizen science project involving schoolchildren and community members—teaching them to build their own sensors, deploy them, and collect data. This is an important engagement exercise, helping people understand air quality as something that affects them and making it real and tangible.

Claire Chaikin-Bryan (Lake Macquarie City Council): Lake Macquarie City Council has been working in the Internet of Things space for a while, including air quality and urban heat data. We’ve previously worked with UTS on projects like this, and when the opportunity to be part of OpenAir came up, we jumped at it, thinking we could expand on our past work in a new way.

One of the big challenges in air quality monitoring, especially at low cost, is the data. Understanding the data and its limitations is really important. The community needs to be well educated when they look at data from these sensors. That’s why we don’t just roll out sensors—we run workshops with the community so those building them understand where the data comes from and its limitations, and can communicate that to others.

For this project with OpenAir, we’re empowering our community to put air quality sensors where they’re most interested in testing—at home, in local parks, schools, or community centres.

We think we’ve taken these topics to the next level with OpenAir. We’re the first, I think, to do such a comprehensive range of topics under one banner. I hope the resources we produce from OpenAir are picked up by practitioners and local governments not just across Australia but around the world, and that they’re valuable to everyone.