AAAR 36th Annual Conference October 16 - October 20, 2017 Raleigh Convention Center Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Abstract View
Air Quality, Infrastructure, and Well-Being: Are They Linked?
RAJ LAL, Armistead G. Russell, Anu Ramaswami, Kirti Das, Yingling Fan, Georgia Institute of Technology
Abstract Number: 436 Working Group: Urban Aerosols
Abstract Air Quality, infrastructure and emotional well-being are aspects of day to day life that we likely think about, but probably don’t assess. Further, it’s unlikely that we consider the extent to which they are related, if at all. Given the association between each of the three to human health and livability within cities, the association between the three could be a critical, but currently missing component, of developing healthy, livable, sustainable and environmentally friendly cities.
Field sampling methods and results exploring the relationship between air quality, infrastructure and well-being are presented from a case study in Minneapolis, MN. during Fall 2016. Air pollution (PM2.5, NOx, O3, T, RH) was assessed using low-cost air pollution monitors that were deployed in six neighborhoods of varying SES and accessibility to the light rail transit system. Concurrently, well-being and infrastructure assessment surveys through a smart phone application were conducted by n~250 survey respondents within each of the six neighborhoods. In addition, dispersion modeling is used to provide spatiotemporal exposure fields to extend the observations across the study area. With the pollution modeling and monitoring results, which are being calibrated every two weeks with MPCA research-grade instruments, and findings from the well-being and infrastructure surveys, we will be able to characterize the association between air quality, infrastructure, and emotional well-being.
This work can provide an in-depth analysis of air quality, infrastructure and well-being that city planners may consider for future, sustainable development. Further, these methods are planned to be applied with similar setups in Atlanta, GA. and Rajkot, India in the coming years, which can give insight on the intra-city and intra-country relationship between air quality, infrastructure, and emotional well-being.