January 19th 2022
Feature: Why data is key to air quality monitoring
In his latest column, Nick Ruxton Boyle, Head of Environment at Marston Holding explains why understanding the data is key to creating better air quality.
I have been thinking about data a lot this year, which might surprise you. The amount of data we generate these days is phenomenal as just about everything these days is digitised.
I was talking to a colleague recently about data storage and I was fascinated by the amount of data we create, store, organise and try to make sense of.
We got talking about petabytes, and I had to Google the term as it is not one I had come across before. For your information, a petabyte is 1,000 terabytes and would need 1,000 large home computers to store this amount of data.
My interest was piqued and if you are interested 1,000 petabytes is an exabyte and 1,000 exabytes is a zettabyte. A zettabyte is so large that it would take one billion large home computers to store!
Anyway, what has this got to do with air quality you might say, well quite a lot as it happens.
Across the UK air quality data is being collected by traditional and modern methods. We have our national network of automatic urban and rural network stations managed by DEFRA, and probably hundreds and thousands of diffusion tubes used locally for a wide range of purposes.
All this monitoring is creating data, alongside the new digital low-cost hyper-local monitors that many towns and cities are installing outside sensitive receptor sites such as schools and hospitals.
This data is key for transport planners, like me, to justify, and validate public investment in sustainable transport and travel schemes. The data is crucial in selecting the most viable local solution and understanding the intended and unintended consequences.
The concept of a smart city has been around for many years now and I often discuss with city clients what it means to them. Most cities these days are smart in that they collect and utilise the data they generate to improve things for their residents and businesses.
Air pollution is complex and the data that is generated needs to be presented and translated into something that those who want to use it can understand. Most air quality improvement projects require some sort of behaviour change from the public and in order to elicit this, the public needs to understand both why they are doing it and the consequences of them not changing behaviour. Data, and in particular data presented and translated is how this can be achieved.
As we all become social scientists and are used to receiving and decoding data [next slide please Sir Chris] I challenge you to go onto your local council’s website and see what air quality data they have and publish. I often wonder who looks at the data, apart from me of course, and who it is published for.
Nick Ruxton-Boyle, Director of Environment at Marston Holding
Agreed, monitoring gives you data and data gives you the ability to measure. Measurement gives control. Everything builds on the data, but without robust data that you can have complete confidence in, you have worse than nothing, as pollution mitigation strategies can be sabotaged before starting.
Excellent article – data is vital. At least outdoor air quality is monitored to some extent but indoor air in homes tends to be ignored. The gas emergency service doesn’t even have a duty to test the air or appliances for deadly, invisible, odourless carbon monoxide (CO). Indoor air can be more concentrated, therefore more dangerous, but at least the individual has more control over indoor air.
Yes, but the roadside diffusion tubes do NOT measure PM10 of PM2.5 or anything else, only NO2. And the Defra AQ monitoring system does not cover the whole of the UK. The meters are mainly in cities. Many rural areas have no AQ government monitoring stations at all. None. Look at the Defra pages, count up the sites and look at the locations on a map.Computer modeling extrapolations are being made based on meteorological data and the assumption that less populated areas are inevitably less polluted.This is not necessarily the case as polluted air, for example, smoke, can travel a long way. And farms, suburban industrial sites, coastal ports and docks can all create very local air pollution hot spots that are going unnoticed. It is the same with coal, pelelt and log burning nin small towns and villages. That air pollution is disregarded.If no one measures it, on the spot, no one knows. As you suggested, I looked at my local council’s website. They do not have any AQ data of their own, let alone publish it. You’re absolutely right, the data are crucial if we want to know about the air we are breathing. As others here have said it is time we had proper AQ monitoring in every part of the UK. Could we not have meters outside shopping centres and schools? Perhaps it is a question of money? Perhaps Defra has no funding to expand and update their already large (but not large enough?) AQ network? If companies like Purple Air and the Sensor Community can measure our air at a fine grained level, then perhaps Defra can shortly?
Just to say that Sensor Community isn’t a company but just a few guys giving up their time. The work of Sensor Community is done by the citizen scientists who have built over 14,000 sensors across the world. Purple Air is a commercial outfit that makes PM2.5 sensors but they are very expensive compared to making a Sensor Community one that does essentially the same thing. Let me know if you want any help making the Sensor Community ones, I’ve made over a hundred.
Hi Nick. I look at local data regularly. We are lucky in Sheffield to have half a dozen Council owned stations, three DEFRA ones and loads of community sensors measuring NO2 on a monthly basis or PM2.5 in almost real time.