Democratizing the Movement for Clean Air

Understanding local air quality is essential to the movement for environmental justice and clean air policy, but often, data about air quality is inaccessible on a neighborhood or household level. Communities looking to advocate for clean air need access to easy to use sensors and platforms to store and present the data. Small sensors present opportunities to democratize air quality data, support evidence-informed campaigns and fill data gaps, but limitations in their usability inhibit uptake from non-technical audiences, and variability in the quality of sensors continues to drive skepticism of the technology from decision makers. 

HabitatMap’s approach is to develop the tools and platforms needed to enable educators, community-based organizations, community scientists and academics to map air pollution and advocate for clean air. HabitatMap is an environmental technology non-profit that builds open-source, free, and low-cost air quality data solutions. It does this by abating cost and capacity barriers to the collection and use of air quality data. AirBeam – its palm-sized sensor – is one of the best performing small sensors on the market, and AirCasting – its accompanying data visualization and guidance platform – is one of the largest open-source databases of community-collected air quality data in the world. HabitatMap is unique in this field as a not-for-profit sensor manufacturer with a strong commitment to open data and community-driven action.

AirBeams are small low cost and wearable sensors that are democratizing air quality monitoring. AirCasting is an accessible and engaging app that is easy for users to engage with. AirCasting was developed specifically with environmental justice communities in mind. HabitatMap makes technologies accessible so that communities who face disproportionate environmental burdens can advocate for equity and improved quality of life. The AirCasting iOS and Android apps are free as is the AirCasting website. The AirBeam is low-cost and free AirBeams are provided to qualifying environmental justice organizations. All the software and hardware we create is open-source. HabitatMap developed a free AirCasting Toolkit targeted at schools, community-based organizations, and libraries in environmental justice communities to provide all the information and resources needed to plan and execute AirCasting clean air campaigns.

HabitatMap focuses on low-income communities and communities of color living with disproportionate environmental burdens. HabitatMap does this by 1) making technologies accessible (free, low-cost, open-source) so communities facing disproportionate environmental burdens can advocate for equity and improved quality of life; 2) partnering directly with public schools and community based organizations in neighborhoods most impacted by air pollution to advocate for improved quality of life; and 3) widely disseminating the best practices and lessons learned from our partnerships with these schools and community based organizations. 

HabitatMap’s tools are already in use worldwide and having impact. There have been over 1 billion measurements made, more than 30,000 app downloads and more than 10,000 AirBeams sold worldwide. The AirCasting platform has been instrumental in the environmental education of thousands of students and the successful implementation of hundreds of clean air campaigns e.g. the Environmental Law & Policy Center in Chicago, researchers at the University of Southern California and a network of community scientists via BvLF’s Urban95 initiative, and French non-profit Airparif’s AIRLAB initiative in Paris.

HabitatMap began in 2006 by Brooklyn activists with a shared interest in developing technology to support community organizing efforts directed at cleaning up Newtown Creek and addressing health concerns in the surrounding Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods. HabitatMap is led by community activist and information designer Michael Heimbinder and a board of experts with knowledge of conservation, environmental law, and public policy. HabitatMap’s technologies and platforms are used by communities around the world. We partner directly with the communities impacted by air pollution and empower them to advocate for equity and improved quality of life. We encourage our partner organizations to lead the implementation of the programs and then gather and share the best practices and lessons learned. Our history as a community organization informs our current organizational structure and we maintain a small administrative staff and work with consultants when needed to keep organizational overhead low and reinvest any funding directly into the program. 

HabitatMap is looking to scale our existing products to reach more campaigners and educators in a greater diversity of regions. It will enable hundreds of effective clean air campaigns by maintaining, improving and disseminating HabitatMap’s tools, which reduce cost and capacity barriers to local-scale monitoring. Improving the performance of the AirCasting platform and ensuring it continues to meet the needs of the thousands of clean air advocates who use the platform to measure, map, and crowdsource air quality measurements is vital. Software

development of the AirCasting platform is ongoing; it never stops. Work on the AirCasting platform software falls into three categories: maintenance, debugging, and feature development. A priority area will be features that provide new interpretations and visualizations of the data that make it more accessible, speeding up the display of big data sets, and improving the user experience by debugging, refactoring, and optimizing code.

Measuring air quality is, by nature, an act of social change. The data collected from measurements can shape policy debates, fuel advocacy, and highlight the disproportionate impact air pollution has on historically marginalized communities. Unfortunately, this subtle but important piece of public action is limited by expensive equipment and disjointed, inaccessible tracking tools.

The AirBeam, when combined with the AirCasting Actions platform, links activists, removes barriers from measurement and tracking, and allows individual actions to galvanize broader public movements around air quality. Climate change is one of the most pressing issues in human history, and truly grassroots solutions are only possible if tools like this are in the hands of those most impacted by the crisis.

As the platform expands, we anticipate that environmental justice groups will be able to better network, share observations, and work with public officials to craft more effective policy around climate and clean air. Instead of working in silos and individual communities, activists will quickly catalyze broad movements with the power to dramatically change public policy.

After more than a decade spent developing foundational technologies and know-how, HabitatMap’s air quality monitoring platform is mature and ready to immediately begin scaling up. Given appropriate financial resources, by 2025 we can multiply by 10 times our current impact: that’s 10 billion measurements made, more than 300,000 app downloads, and more than 100,000 AirBeams sold worldwide. This translates into hundreds of thousands of students and community members being educated on the health effects of air pollution and its sources and thousands of clean air campaigns directed at improving the built environment, regulating polluters, and implementing clean air policies.

Our organization is tracking progress by measuring distinct data points that reflect utilization of the platform as well as movement-building actions like air quality measurements. Measurables include:

• Number of AirBeams in use worldwide
• Number of app downloads, reflecting utilization of the AirCasting Actions platform
• Number of measurements taken

Air quality measurements are unique, specific actions of civic engagement, so tracking the scale and accessibility of our platform is our most significant measure of impact. Ongoing growth in all of these categories indicates our success at sparking civic action.

Our intervention is built around the acknowledgement that climate change is a global problem created by centuries of human activity, but its most effective solutions will emerge from grassroots movements. Our theory of change centers around air quality measurements as tools that inform activists, inspire movement, and galvanize action toward policy change. An effective movement cannot operate without accurate information, and this platform fills a major gap in information that empowers activists.

The link between air quality measurements, movement-building, and policy change has been proven time and again through this platform. We document these success stories at aircastingactions.org so people can see the impact this solution is having in real-time. One such example of this emerged via a partnership with activists in New York City; together with allies at the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and ALIGN, HabitatMap worked to inform the decisions regarding changes to garbage zoning. HabitatMap partnered with community-based organizations to measure air quality using AirBeams + AirCasting and count trucks at trucking-intensive intersections in Brooklyn and the Bronx. We trained young people from UPROSE, THE POINT CDC, El Puente, and Cleanup North Brooklyn to use AirBeams and survey forms to measure air quality and tally trucks in their communities. In 2019 the Mayor signed the Commercial Waste Zones legislation which will dramatically reduce truck traffic and improve air quality once fully implemented.

The easy availability of the AirBeam and the accessibility of the AirCasting platform has enabled this story to be repeated across the country. As we scale, these discrete moments of civic action will form into broader movements to change policy around climate and air pollution.

Our project is built around the AirBeam, a low-cost, palm-sized air quality instrument that measures hyperlocal concentrations of harmful air pollution particles, known as particulate matter, as well as humidity and temperature. AirCasting is an open-source environmental data visualization platform that provides air quality data from AirBeam on a smartphone app and online mapping system.

Where other air quality monitors can be cost-prohibitive, we have designed this solution to be affordable and to integrate with an open-source platform. The AirCasting app is available on iOS and Android and allows users to both share their own measurements and track measurements of other AirBeam users. The team of technical experts we have contracted with allow us to continue updating the platform and adding features to keep the platform at the cutting edge while maintaining accessibility and usability.

HabitatMap is an environmental health justice organization so diversity and inclusion is a prominent part of both what we do and how we do it. The AirBeam and AirCasting platform were specifically designed for, and in collaboration with, community organizations located in

low-income communities and communities of color working to combat air inequality HabitatMap maintains a working to combat air inequality. HabitatMap maintains a flat organizational structure of collaborative decision-making among equals and all decisions are evaluated to
ensure that they are in keeping with HabitatMap’s mission of advancing equity. All our software is open-source and free and we collaborate with public libraries to loan out AirBeams.

HabitatMap is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that is focused exclusively on advancing the movement for clean air and empowering communities and activists. Our guiding ethos is to make a product that is as affordable as possible that enables the greatest amount of impact possible. We make the AirBeam widely available at a low cost and tie it to the AirCasting platform, which is open-source and free for all who use it. We also collaborate with public libraries to loan out AirBeams to further ensure the accessibility of the technology and enhance its impact in historically marginalized communities.

Our organization has a diversified stream of revenue that comes from a mix of AirBeam sales and grants. We recently received a large commitment from the Clean Air Fund to expand our fundraising capacity and ensure expanded revenue; we are in the early days of a strategic fundraising expansion geared toward pursuing more grants and private philanthropic dollars to enable our ongoing growth.

We were fortunate to receive a major commitment of 260k from the Clean Air Fund in 2022 to enable strategic fundraising growth (among other priorities), which is enabling us to pursue new philanthropic funding. In addition, AirBeam sales are growing in tandem with the increasing use of the AirCasting platform and currently bring in approximately 400k/year in revenue.