Clean Air Toolbox for Cities

The Center for Sustainable Urban Development is pleased to be part of the Columbia University-wide Clean Air ToolBox initiative for Cities. This initiative aims to support high quality air quality monitoring and open data to support advocacy and policy for clean air in cities. Currently, as our partner OpenAQ notes,  a great inequality exists in access to air quality data, pollution source detection and health impact studies in many of the world’s cities. We believe by leveraging new technologies, science and networks, we can build communities and arm activists and policymakers with better data and science to more effectively push for targeted, clean air policies and programs. Air pollution is currently responsible for over 7 millions deaths globally, including 4 million from ambient air pollution linked to vehicle exhaust, waste burning, building heating, fossil fuel plants and industrial activities among other sources. We aim to explore and track how interventions like vehicle electrification or better industrial processes can make a difference and lead to cleaner air and better health in our cities.

Professor Faye McNeil explaining the Clean Air Toolbox for Cities Initiative

Most recently, the Clean Air Toolbox for Cities including Professor Faye McNeil, Dr Dan Westerfeld, Associate Professor Darby Jack (CUMC Environmental Health Sciences) and CSUD Co-Director Jacqueline Klopp are part of the Catalyzing Clean Air Solutions (CCAIRS) project led by Jessica Seddon at the World Resources Institute and funded by USAID 2020-2025. CCAIRS seeks to make the causes of pollution more visible, tangible, and personal and to build a vivid, shared understanding of the pathway to clean air. The consortium will be working in three pilot regions (Africa, Asia and Latin America).

Related center work and reading:

Opportunities and Challenges for Filling the Gaps: Improving Measurement of Air Quality in Low and Middle-Income Countries.

Robert Pinder, Jacqueline M. Klopp, Gary Kleiman, Gayle S. W. Hagler, Yewande Awe, Sara Terry. Atmospheric Environment. 215, 116794. October 2019

A Nairobi Experiment in Using Low Cost Air Quality Monitors

Priyanka deSouza, Victor Nthusi, Jacqueline M. Klopp, Bruce E Shaw, On Ho Wah and John Saffell, Roderic Jones and Carlo Ratti. 2017. Clean Air Journal November. 27 (2): 12-42. 

Why Participation Matters for Air Quality Studies: Risk Perceptions, Understandings of Air Pollution and Mobilization in a Poor Neighborhood in Nairobi, Kenya. 

Nicole Ngo, Simon Kokoyo and Jacqueline M. Klopp. 2017. Public Health, 142: 177-185. 

Traffic impacts on PM2.5 air quality in Nairobi, Kenya

Patrick L. Kinney, Michael Gatari Gichuru, Nicole Volavka-Close, Nicole Ngo, Peter K. Ndiba, Anna Law Anthony,  Gachanja Samuel Mwaniki,  Gaita Steven, N. Chillrud, Elliott Sclar. Environmental Science & Policy. 14 (4): 369-378. June 2011

Impacts of roadway emissions on urban particulate matter concentrations in sub-Saharan Africa: new evidence from Nairobi, Kenya

Eleane D S van Vliet,  Pat  L Kinney Environmental Research Letters. 2(4): 1-5, December 2007.