NSF Abstract

The American Lung Association stated that air quality, in particular that in urban settings that contain large amounts of particulate matter, is a serious health problem for residents. In addition, for many parts of the U.S, government owned and maintained air monitoring equipment and data does not have the spatial resolution to provide communities, especially those in low income heavily polluted areas, with air quality data where they live, work, and play. This Civic Innovation Challenge (CIVIC) planning process brings together a science team with local community advocacy and faith-based organizations to co-design a science/research-based, implementable, scalable, and sustainable solution that addresses air quality, an important community resilience problem in many low income neighborhoods. This CIVIC planning activity supports infrastructure for the collection of local air quality data and provides community education and empowerment to improve air quality in a pilot program focused on a South Los Angeles low income community. The planning process will also plan, promote, and create programs to expose local youth and community residents to green jobs and careers that can further build climate resilience and provide good paying jobs. The University of California, Los Angeles and the Ezrach Brain Trust Association lead this effort and will partner with faith- and community-based organizations, educational institutions, and workforce centers to engage them in co-designing a community-based air monitoring network and green workforce development program for the South Los Angeles neighborhood of Leimert Park. Broader impacts include a community-based air monitoring network that will provide hyperlocal, real-time, air quality data to increase community education and awareness of air quality and its impacts on their health and lives as well as provide essential data to allow community advocacy for interventions and mitigation strategies; thus, improving community health and well-being. The green workforce training program will expose Leimert Park community youth and members to green career pathways, ensuring the community is part of the rapidly growing green economy. This will involve working with project partners and local industry, fostering economic development by educating and equipping residents and youth for green jobs and careers.

The project involves building an air quality measurement and monitoring infrastructure to support a network of people and online accessible tools to collect community air quality data, share individual and collective narratives about local environmental issues, and support the community in helping them know how to critically analyze data to build a science and data-driven advocacy campaign for improved community air quality. The project will develop community training and education programs about air quality data, data analysis literacy, and how the data can be used for advocacy. Another objective is to design, with partners, and implement a community-engaged and participatory action approach to improving local air quality. Low-cost air monitoring deployment sites in Leimert Park will be informed via a community needs assessment and information from focus groups. An online data visualization platform will be developed to provide community members access to real-time air quality data. Data will be used to improve understanding, awareness of the impacts of compromised air quality to help individuals and the community advocate for action. Essential to the activity is the engagement of faith- and community-based organizations that have the trust and involvement of local community members. Also crucial is the involvement of local workforce centers and secondary schools to help develop the green workforce training initiative and establish a training pipeline. This planning process will improve the understanding of how community-based efforts can be designed to lead to policy changes. It will also foster and strengthen collaboration between researchers and community stakeholders, develop new collaborations and partnerships, refine the research vision to enable submission of a successful follow-on proposal that will implement the community vision, and provide data to address research questions and develop evaluation methods and measures for the follow-on project. Through this approach, the project team feels the activities and anticipated outcomes can be replicated in other similar urban communities facing similar challenges.

This project is in response to the Civic Innovation Challenge program?s Track A. Climate and Environmental Instability - Building Resilient Communities through Co-Design, Adaption, and Mitigation and is a collaboration between NSF, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy. The proposal was co-funded by the NSF Directorate for Geosciences and Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Award Abstract #2431474