A Vehicle for Research: Using Street Sweepers to Explore the Landscape of Environmental Community Action

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Summary:
In this paper, Paul M. Aoki, et al discuss several key points concerning the gathering of air quality data by citizens, as well as the social and political ramifications of such action.  The authors conducted this research in hopes of refining the development of mobile participatory sensors that ordinary people can use to collect viable data.  This data could be used to augment existing data stations and provide community activist groups with politically relevant evidence for legislative change.  Environmental decision-making is something of a closed-door affair; government agencies (such as the EPA) have established data-gathering facilities that they deem reliable enough to inform legislation, and outside intervention or assistance is typically dismissed.  Three groups typically inform or influence the environmental-legislation process: government bodies, emitters (factories, oil refineries, etc.), and public interest advocates like community groups or The Sierra Club.  


This particular study was of the San Francisco Bay Area, which is an ideal location to study air quality due to various historical factors about the area and characteristics of California environmental legislation that make it a sort of "laboratory" for air quality standards.  The primary monitoring station in the Bay Area is operated by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD, or "Air District").  However, dissenting opinions about how air quality should be measured make agreement about its effectiveness difficult.  Many citizen groups in the area feel that the data models produced by the Air District are an inaccurate reflection of the average citizen's pollution intake because the monitoring stations are too spread out and too far above the ground.  


The data gathered by citizens (or in this case, by sensor packages mounted on street sweeper vehicles) seems immediately advantageous since it is "on-the-ground" data.  However, this approach is also rife with problems.  People may be interested in gathering data, but only for the purpose of influencing others -- they have no interest in learning anything from it.  The quality of the data gathered by less expensive, mobile equipment is also much lower, calling into question whether such data would be valid or useful at all.  Because of disagreements about data and the way it is utilized, government agencies, researchers, and community groups are usually so distrustful of each other than very little progress toward change can be achieved at all.  The researchers concluded that in order to promote successful community action toward environmental change, advocacy groups should connect with collaborative social mapping tools to preserve continuity in long advocacy campaigns, and some means of validation for data collected by non-expert users should be established so that their data is taken seriously.


Discussion:
As with any other hotly-debated policy topic, environmental legislation carries a host of variables that often make it nearly impossible for disputing groups to arrive at an effective solution; in this case the disputing groups are the people (activist groups) and the government (the Air District, and by larger association, the EPA).  The people don't think they government is using "real" enough, "on-the-ground" data, and the government doesn't think the people could possibly gather any accurate, useful data on their own.  What bothered me about this paper is the fact that the researchers never made mention about their findings regarding the data -- what did the street sweepers collect?  Was the data any good?  Could it have been used to assist government agencies in their analysis of air quality?  We never find out because the authors are too busy telling us what we already know about policy debates.