CONA - Community Observation Networks for Air

One of the main things we wanted to show with CONA is that air quality is not the same everywhere - even across a small town like Rangiora. Until now information about Rangiora's air quality came from only one monitoring site - the one run by regulator Environment Canterbury (ECan) in the centre of town. It reports levels of particulate matter (PM) every hour. You can find this data at www.lawa.org.nz , or download it from ECan ( data.ecan.govt.nz ). Now, however, for the first time we can combine data from the 16 ODINs we had installed at various locations around the town to produce a map of average particle levels during the month of August 2016. Map of average PM2.5 levels across Rangiora in August 2016, based on interpolation of ODIN data (green = low, red = high) Now you've seen the map, here comes the disclaimers, how we did it and what it means. Firstly, this map should be treated as preliminary. With further analysis it might change slightly. It is created by firstly av...

The ODIN is a new outdoor air quality monitoring technology. It is WAY cheaper than the existing technologies used around the world and across New Zealand. Regulators, researchers and the public are right to be sceptical about the quality of data coming out of it. So before we present any results from the ODINs, we need to convince you (and especially ourselves) that the data is any good. Firstly, some very quick history. The first ODINs were built and tested in Rangiora in 2015 using the same dust sensors we used in the PACMAN. That was promising, but soon after that test we discovered some new sensors coming out of China (Plantower PMS3003). We tested a few and they worked really well. We then built a fleet of 18 new ODINs with the new sensors. These were what we used in Rangiroa in 2016. So, to evaluate them we took them down to ECan's regulatory monitoring site in Rangiora and ran them there for 2 weeks in July 2016. We did the same again at the end of our study in October. ODI...

In winter 2016 the CONA project went back to Rangiora in Canterbury for a second year. In 2015 we'd trialled two new air quality sensing technologies - the PACMAN for indoors and the ODIN for outdoors, as well as doing detailed measurements of meteorological parameters like wind speed, direction, temperature and humidity around the town. We learned that we could use PACMAN to distinguish smoke being generated in the home from smoke seeping into the home from outside. We also found that changes in the wind shortly after sunset seemed to moving smoke around to different parts of the town. So why did we go back for another winter? What did we hope to learn? The 2016 study focussed on three main themes: Upgrading the ODIN sensors and scaling up the network from 6 to 18 stations. Pairing some of the ODINs with PACMANs by placing outside the homes of our participants to learn more about the origin of smoke in the home. A more thorough evaluation of the performance of the new sensors...

In short... YES! In fact, we're getting ready to gear up to launching some bigger and better air quality projects over the next few years exploring what new technologies offer scientists and communities alike. Firstly a quick apology that we got out of the blogging habit last year. But our winter 2016 CONA study in Rangiora was hugely successful.We'll reveal how and why over a series of forthcoming posts. Now we're busy getting ready for our third CONA pilot study. This will focus, one more time, on Rangiora in Canterbury. However, we are also considering whether we are ready to trial some of the CONA technologies and methods in other towns. More details to come soon... Finally, we have been putting together a longer-term vision of how we aim to move CONA forward from a science experiment to something that can be adopted by communities and Regional Councils, and equivalent organisations overseas. We've been applying for larger research funding grants and been in convers...