Best Practices for the Use of Low-Cost Air Quality Sensors in the Urban Environment
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Hear from experts on how to install, manage, calibrate, and communicate a low-cost monitoring network

Before cities and governments can design urban environments that facilitate healthy air quality, they need to understand the nature and sources of air pollution at the neighborhood level. Air quality managers, researchers, and the public need more real-world information about the benefits and limitations of low-cost sensors to better understand how they can best be used to provide real-time, local-scale air quality information.

Clarity Movement has had the unique opportunity to work with cities like Houston, Denver, and London to implement indicative air quality monitoring networks that supplement existing regulatory networks. From these projects we have gleaned best practices for the deployment and operation of low-cost sensor networks in the urban environment.

Panelists will present lessons learned through projects in their cities as a resource for other air quality managers looking to learn how they can install, manage, and calibrate a low-cost monitoring network. Some of the questions attendees can expect to see addressed include: 

• What is the current state of low-cost sensor technology?
• How much technical knowledge is required for installation? For maintenance?
• What environmental factors to look out for that can skew results? 
• How to select and prioritize monitoring sites when implementing an indicative monitoring network?
• How to apply collocation and calibration best practices to ensure data quality?
• How to use a sensor network to build relationships between community groups and local government?