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The OPENAIR project revolutionises air quality monitoring – empowering local governments to take action on this pressing issue.

The World Health Organization considers air pollution a significant environmental threat to public health worldwide.

Poor air quality caused by bushfires, wood-fired heaters, agriculture, transportation, industry and urban heat has emerged as a silent menace. It’s a significant cause of health problems and premature death in Australian communities.

In the battle for clean air, the need for a robust and accessible air quality monitoring system has never been more urgent. Localised air quality monitoring can help local governments address the problem, but many councils need more expertise in this area.

What is OPENAIR?

In 2020, on the back of the devastating 2019-20 Australian bushfire season, the NSW Smart Sensing Network (NSSN) distributed a survey to all local councils in NSW, asking what air quality issues were of concern and what aspects of environmental sensing they lacked expertise in. It turned out that, on top of bushfire smoke, local communities were concerned about an array of air quality issues.

The survey responses showed that many councils needed a better understanding of available technology or the technical know-how required to set up air monitoring sensors. Councils also had no standard guidance on the best ways to collect and analyse air quality data. 

Something needed to be done.

The Operational Network of Air Quality Impact Resources (OPENAIR) project was officially launched in January 2022 as a $2.4 million air quality monitoring research and development program funded by the NSW Department of Planning and Environment (DPE) through the Digital Restart Fund.

OPENAIR brought universities, councils and subject matter experts together to develop a best practice guide to air monitoring. This collaborative approach – involving experts in sensing; data management and sharing; air quality science; urban heat; institutional enablement; community engagement; and business cases – has, according to OPENAIR project lead and NSSN Natural Hazards & Smart Cities Theme Leader Peter Runcie, “provided significant contributions to the success of OPENAIR". 

The Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) led the research for the project; its key role was to help translate innovative research in smart sensing into compelling solutions that create value for the economy, environment and society.

NSW local council journeys

Notably, air quality is a local issue that significantly impacts the health and wellbeing of communities. OPENAIR explored this further, looking at the impacts of air pollution on various areas, including public health, social wellbeing, local economies and climate resilience.

The project addressed the diversity of air quality issues experienced across NSW. Several participating councils across NSW were given the opportunity to examine their unique environmental concerns around air pollution, investigating pollutants specific to their local areas.

Parramatta is one of those councils. The City of Parramatta Lord Mayor Sameer Pandey said the council “prides itself as being a smart city” and wanted to use data from smart technology to improve the quality of life within their community.

Parramatta has undergone much change and expansion in recent years, including the massive redevelopment of Parramatta Square. As a result, Parramatta City Council was most interested in monitoring the air quality in newly developed areas that experience high pedestrian traffic.

Air quality sensor installed on pole

Air quality sensor installed in Parramatta Square.

The Sutherland Shire Council, on the other hand, wanted to focus on a different air quality concern. Situated on a bush interface, their council is subjected to bushfires and hazard-reduction burns. They assessed the health implications of pollutants from these conditions on people within their community.

They worried that smoke and particulates were collecting in river valleys, affecting the residents of those areas. Ingo Koernicke, Senior Environmental Scientist at the Sutherland Shire Council, explained that, “the sensors that we’ve been able to get from the OPENAIR project, will be able to test this hypothesis.”

Newcastle is home to the world’s largest coal port, and up to 40 trains come through the local area daily, carrying tonnes of coal out to the port. There is a high level of noticeable coal dust in the city, and it accumulates in residents’ homes. Newcastle City Council, therefore, wanted to measure coal dust in the air.

City of Newcastle Sustainability Manager Heather Stevens said the data collection from their sensors “hopes to quantify where the coal dust is coming from and under what conditions it occurs”.

A locomotive hauls a bulk trainload of black coal

A locomotive hauls a bulk trainload of black coal.

An opportunity for communities to get involved

Understanding the data is important… so the community needs to be well educated.

– Claire Chaikin-Bryan, Lake Macquarie City Council

For some councils, OPENAIR brought with it an opportunity for community members to understand their local air quality issues and learn to interpret the data collected using low-cost smart sensing devices. 

Andrew Tovey, Senior Research Consultant at ISF, points out that the low-cost sensor technologies are accessible and understandable for community members, encouraging what he calls “citizen sensing”.

For example, the Lake Macquarie City Council is running workshops in which community members are building their own air quality monitoring sensors. The process helps them understand where the data comes from and how to educate others in the community.

This is an important engagement exercise that helps people understand air quality as something that affects them. It makes it real.

“One of the big challenges with air quality monitoring, particularly when you’re doing it at a low-cost, is the data”, says Claire Chaikin-Bryan from Lake Macquarie City Council.

“Understanding the data is important… so the community needs to be well educated."

When community members understand the data and its limitations, it empowers people to roll out sensors where they’re most interested in testing air quality.

This helps local councils ascertain the placement of this smart technology, ensuring they are meeting the needs of their respective communities.

Claire Chaikin-Bryan running an air quality sensor workshop

Claire Chaikin-Bryan running a workshop for building air quality monitoring sensors. [l-r] Claire Chaikin-Bryan, community member.

A community of practice

We see OPENAIR as the beginning of a much longer-term process of community of practice-building.

– Andrew Tovey, ISF

Underpinning the project was the vision of establishing a growing community of practice. Learning from each other, attacking a common problem and meeting a common goal.

OPENAIR has built a strong community of collaboration. They are learning through doing, where participating councils are now easily able to share information among themselves to enhance their environmental data-gathering capabilities.

Data collected from the sensors is shared with DPE and is being consolidated into a publicly available air quality data resource. They are the foremost authority on ambient air quality sensing and have recognised the importance of these low-cost environmental sensing technologies.

Tovey says, “we see OPENAIR as the beginning of a much longer-term process of community of practice building.”

Government resources

This knowledge has established Australia’s first comprehensive best practice methodology for low-cost air quality sensing, which will be published as an extensive suite of practical resources.

The OPENAIR Best Practice Guide for Smart Air Quality Monitoring has been developed to help local governments implement air quality monitoring projects.

The Best Practice Guide contains all the resources available to local governments to help them build their air quality monitoring expertise and develop evidence-based policies and interventions applicable to the needs of their local communities.

OPENAIR documentary

Peter Runcie:

My name's Peter Runcie. I'm the Project lead for the Atlanta Project. So the open ended project came about in 2020. This is just after the time of the 20 1920 bushfires, and we had communities all around the state and the country indeed facing lots of smoke. We sent a survey out to all of the councils in New South Wales asking them two questions.

So the first question was do you have issues with air quality and if so, what sort? And then the second question was around technology asking councils were they aware of the availability of low-cost environmental sensors and do they know how to use them? Almost all councils said they had problems with bushfire smoke, which is understandable. But many of them came back and said, Look, we've got issues with transportation related air pollution from road, rail or airports.

We've got industrial pollution from industrial zones, but also agricultural burning dust from mines and railway lines. And we've got problems with heat. So there was a range of different issues from different councils. The second question around technology, most of them came back and said, we've heard about these low-cost sensors that you're talking about, but we really don't know how to choose the right one.

We don't know how to install it. What do you do with the data? And then how do you use that data to actually make sort of interventions in the community and then improve outcomes for people? 

Andrew Tovey:

The project had several objectives. The first was to bring together councils that were interested in working with these new sensing technologies. The other main thing that we were doing is to try to establish a growing community of practice.

This is where the role of the New South Wales Department of Planning environment was really important. So New South Wales DPP run a regulatory network of air quality sensors in New South Wales, and they are the foremost authority on ambient air quality sensing. They have recognized the importance of these technologies. They really wanted to sort of step in with OPENAIR and take leadership and show that we can bring local governments together and we see OPENAIR as the beginning of a much longer-term process of community of practice building.

Sameer Pandey:

City of Parramatta. We pride ourselves in being a smart city. Parramatta Square is one of those areas where there has been massive development in the past few years. Church Street as well is one of those areas where there is massive changes, both of them very high pedestrian traffic. Those were very obvious choices for us to install the sensors and monitor the air quality in those areas.

The data that we collect from the sensors is shared with the New South Wales Government and this will help us to manage the city in a better way. I should also mention that there is a collaboration of other councils as well, and there's a network of councils where we share and talk about this data and how this will impact on communities in each of the council areas to improve the quality of life within our communities.

Ingo Koernicke:

One of the great opportunities of being involved with the OPENAIR Project was that it gave Council the opportunity to investigate local air pollution in the Sydney metropolitan area. Air pollutants have generally been stable or in decline except for two key pollutants, and they are particulates and ozone particulates. What a life. Well, they're really like fine dust that can easily get trapped in your lungs into your bloodstream, and they can have serious health impacts.

Bushfires, for instance, hazard reduction burns. We get smoke from wood fuelled heaters, also from vehicular emissions in particular diesels. Because the southern is situated on a bush interface, it's subjected to bushfires. They get hazard reduction burns. You would expect that the smoke and the particulates would collect in these river valleys, more so than, say, up in the ridge areas where we've got our urban areas.

And to measure that. The sensors that we've been able to get from the OPENAIR program. We'll be able to test that hypothesis. Is that the case? We've chosen to locate the air monitoring sensors in the valley areas because that's where we think that there's going to be a higher risk to our communities in those areas from particulates.

The data that we're going to get from these sensors will either confirm that or maybe provide some other interesting information. So we've got two sensors, one here in the Woronora River Valley, one in the Hacking River Valley. And as a contrast to those two, we've got one at Miranda. So that we can really have a look at the contrasting environments and how the topography affects it, even things like traffic volumes.

In the case from Miranda, for instance, you know, is that a contributor to particulates, for example, by developing a network of other monitors around, potentially around our shire, we'll be able to target responses to the air quality in those particular areas. 

Andrew Tovey:

There's also a big range of applications around transport, building arguments for removing cars from certain areas, electrifying public transport fleets and all kinds of smaller localized interventions that would change actually for the better around transport.

Heather Stevens:

Well, you can see from where I'm standing, Newcastle is home to the world's largest coal port and up to 40 trains come through this location every day carrying tons and tons of coal out to the port. We know that there is a high level of coal dust that is in our city, and this is in residents’ houses, in their backyards.

We don't really know yet where it's from. It could be from the coal trains. It could also be from the stockpiles. So we hope this project will actually help to quantify where coal dust is coming from and under what conditions it occurs. It's only sensors across our local government area was actually quite complicated because they're quite finicky, fussy little machines.

They want to make sure that they're not too much shadow, not vandalised. And they're actually, of course, relevant to the source, which is for us the coal rail lines and also stockpiles. But we did come up with a really innovative solution. We found that we have swimming pools located across the LGA that are nicely spaced but also relevant to where the coal trains are coming through.

So we've installed sensors at all of our inland and coastal swimming pools. We have one extra one which is actually here next to a really busy part of the rail line. So there's a lot of challenges in installing a local air quality system. The first is that council staff don't usually have the resources or the expertise to do such technical processes.

So we've been really fortunate to use the funding that was provided from Department of in Planning and Environment to engage University of Newcastle. So the university has provided us with a scholarship for a stay and that student is actually doing the technical elements that is necessary to do this project as a quality needed. 

Mitchell Aafjes:

 Essentially at the end of my master's degree, I really want to go into further education and so I approached my supervisor at the time, which was Dr. Heather Stevens, and she essentially had a project through OPENAIR, which is installing sensors around Newcastle and monitoring the coal up here at Newcastle.

So the city of Newcastle Council actually bought nine cyplex tic toc sensors. Now the reason why we chose these sensors are not only are they easy to install, but they actually measure a lot of variables which we want to do to research. So they measure things like particulate matter. 2.5 particulate matter, ten wind direction, wind speed, humidity, temperature and all these other variables we'll actually use for that my research and for the actual council. 

So in terms of this project, I'm looking at answering certain research questions to do with the local air pollution here in Newcastle, but also helping the council achieve the industry goals. 

Andrew Tovey:

These low-cost sensor technologies are accessible and understandable for community members and so it's opened up this whole world of citizen science and what we call citizen sensing.

That's actually been demonstrated really nicely by one of our participant councils on the project, Lake Macquarie City Council, and they've done a whole citizen science project where they've brought schoolchildren in, members of the community and taught them how to build their own sensors, how to put those sensors out and start collecting data. This is a really important engagement exercise to help people not only understand about air quality as something that affects them, but it makes it real. That makes it tangible.

Claire Chaikin-Bryan:

So Lake Macquarie City Council has been working in the Internet of Space for a while, including looking at air quality and urban heat data. We've previously worked with UTS on projects around this and when the opportunity came up to be part of OPENAIR, we jumped at the opportunity because we thought we could expand on what we've done in the past but in a different way.

One of the big challenges in air quality monitoring, particularly when you're doing it at a low cost, is the data. Understanding the data is really important and the limitations of the data you get out of low-cost sensors. So that means the community needs to be well-educated when they look at the data from these sensors. And that's part of the reason why we don't just really to that we're running workshops with the community so that those who are building them understand where the data is coming from and the limitations of that data, but also so that they can then communicate that to others in the community, so they understand what's going on.

Now for this project with OPENAIR, we're really looking at empowering our community to be able to put air quality sensors where they're most interested in testing out air quality, whether it be at their home, at their local park, at their school, or at their local community centre. 

Andrew Tovey:

We think we've taken some of these topics to the next level with OPENAIR. We’re the first, I think to do such a complete and comprehensive range of topics all under one banner.

And I hope that 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 are really of value to everyone.

Open Air logo

OPENAIR website – NSW Government Air Quality Hub

Operational Network of Air quality Impact Resources – OPENAIR Best Practice Guide

ISF researchers

UTS researchers

  • Associate Professor, School of Computer Science
  • Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science
  • Senior Lecturer, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
  • Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences
  • Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
  • Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Location

NSW Australia

Years

2022-23

Client

NSW Department of Planning and Environment

Partners

NSW Smart Sensing Network

Australian National University

University of Sydney

Western Sydney University

University of NSW

Contact us

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