Working Together for Clean Air

The Bay Air Center is a Bay Area Air Quality Management District-sponsored community resource that provides technical guidance, materials, and training to Bay Area community members and organizations, free of charge, to support their efforts to understand and improve air quality.

The Center is staffed by people with deep experience in the fields of air quality and community engagement from Kearns & West, TD Environmental, T&B Systems, and InterEthnica.

• Helps community understand the differences and appropriate uses of technology (e.g., air sensors) and ensures community efforts produce meaningful results.
• Effective Use of Technology Helps community understand the differences and appropriate uses of technology (e.g., air sensors) and ensures community efforts produce meaningful results.
• Accurate and Actionable Data Provides resources and tools to ensure community is collecting data “fit for purpose.” This means the data is suitable for answering a question posed in a study, adding credibility to analyses and conclusions, and allowing others to use the data for future applications.
• Partnership Engages community as equal partners from the beginning. We co-create the work to achieve shared goals and outcomes.
• Capacity Building Provides resources and conducts hands-on trainings to help individuals and groups build essential skills for understanding air quality. The Bay Air Center also helps make it possible for communities across the Bay Area to have access to the tools needed to understand issues that affect them.
• Community-led Solutions Uses an approach that centers community in identifying and leading solutions to address air quality issues.
• Responsiveness Designed to provide meaningful support, quickly and efficiently. We are constantly refining our resources and approaches in response to community feedback. Please share your feedback with us!

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Grant Application Assistance

The Bay Air Center provides assistance to groups working on grant applications to fund air quality projects. This has included assistance with many of the early parts of the air monitoring network design process like designing project objectives, selecting initial air monitoring technology, laying out timelines, and budgeting for the necessary equipment and personnel costs that it takes to run an air monitoring program. Bay Air Center support on grant applications has also included helping to lay out the overall structure of the application and writing technical sections of the grant.

Greenaction

The Bay Air Center has been supporting Greenaction in the data review, analysis, and interpretation of their IVAN air sensor network as part of their CARB Community Air Grant. The Center has shared important summaries of the network’s PM data with the Bayview community at Bay View Hunters Point Environmental Justice (EJ) Response Task Force meetings and will continue to provide data analysis support as monitoring continues.

Latinos United for a New America (LUNA)

The Bay Air Center has been supporting Latinos United for a New America (LUNA) on their current CARB grant as they raise awareness around air quality and prepare for a future CARB grant. The Center has completed technical air quality workshops in 3 neighborhoods in San Jose on general air quality information, air quality data, and actions the community can take to address air quality concerns such as vegetation barriers.

Air Sensor Data Set

The Bay Air Center has created the Air Sensor Dataset, a resource for hyperlocal, community, and regional scale analyses. The dataset contains five years of quality-controlled fine particulate matter data for over 4,000 outdoor PurpleAir sensors, and this dataset is available for use through our “contact us” page.