Google Street View Cars Map Air Quality

Aclima conducted its initial test in Denver last summer in which it instrumented three Google Street View cars.

Three Street View cars have already assessed the degree of nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide, ozone, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, black carbon, particulate matter, and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) – air pollutants that have the potential for impacting health or triggering climate change. Yes, that’s right – the search engine giant has now begun the search for pollution in the air, and it’s doing it by equipping its Street View cars with a mobile sensing platform which monitors the air around itself as it goes. The trips were part of a study being conducted by NASA and the EPA that’s focused on improving the collection of air quality data.

Aclima, a San Francisco-based environmental sensor network maker, has partnered with Google Earth Outreach to map urban air quality through Street View cars.

“We have a profound opportunity to understand how cities live and breathe in an entirely new way”, Aclima CEO Davida Herzl said in a statement.

“With more than half of the world’s population now living in cities, environmental health is becoming increasingly important to quality of life”, said Herzl.

The mobility of the cars is a huge asset, as the EPA has stationary sensors for air pollution monitoring located in urban areas, but were never able to obtain street-level measurements.

Aclima and Google will also bring San Francisco Bay Area within the domain of mapping, partnering with communities and scientists to explore new applications.

“Environmental air quality is an issue that affects everyone, especially those living in big cities”, said Karin Tuxen-Bettman, program director for Google Earth Outreach.

Two different companies meet with a single noble common goal: air pollution monitoring.

From the toasty sands of the Sahara Desert to the depths of the Great Barrier Reef, pretty much everything Google Street View has mapped is proving to be spectacular. “The Denver test prepares us for scaling the system and introducing Aclima’s mobile sensing platform to communities anywhere Google Street View vehicles drive”. Aclima hopes the data will help inform local health studies and community planning decisions.

The partnership has already worked on mapping indoor environments, with Aclima and Google creating a network across 21 Google offices around the world to monitor for pollutants and temperature to improve workplace design. The system processes 500 million data points each day on everything from humidity levels to light intensity and air pollution.