Odor reporting app
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Gretchen Gehrke
Jul 3, 2017, 11:17:06 AM7/3/17
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Hi Folks!
Yesterday I was listening to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me (clearly the best news source... ;-) ) and learned about this odor reporting app, Smell PGH. It looks interesting and reminds me of the ideas for an odor reporting platform in Val Verde. I wonder if we could do something similar!
A couple of my favorite features of this platform are (1) that odor reports are directly transmitted to the county health department and (2) that you can add a topographic layer to the map to help understand how low-lying air may move. I'd love to see what sort of resolution could be achieved with wind direction too.
The app was created by the Carnegie Mellon CREATE lab, who also made the Speck particulate matter sensor. They're looking for folks to test out the app and provide feedback. I think it would be great to share feedback an ideas on publiclab.org too, maybe as comments on this odor reporting research note, since odor reporting could really be an effective way to identify pollution sources and/or emissions problems without the onus of demonstrating an air permit violation.
It might be useful to compile a list of odor reporting platforms and health department odor reporting procedures out there, to learn from what others have done. Does anyone know of other platforms or have experience reporting odors? If so, reply to this thread or start a wiki on Public Lab and we can start compiling them!
Best,
Gretchen
Liz Barry
Jul 5, 2017, 12:37:39 PM7/5/17
to Gretchen Gehrke, plots-airquality, public...@googlegroups.com
This is great! I"ve been wondering about this approach since we were in Val Verde. Hasn't this method of cataloging smell events been very effective in presenting community response to air quality nuisances, like even in just a pen-and-paper way? I feel we've heard of effective community campaigns before, and i'd love to see them presented.
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Stevie Lewis
Jul 12, 2017, 9:26:55 AM7/12/17
to Liz Barry, Sara Sage, Gretchen Gehrke, plots-airquality, public...@googlegroups.com
Ohh this is interesting! Sara has anything happened with the odor log idea lately? Know you've been busy with some other monitoring. What's the latest?
Best,
Stevie
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Gwen Ottinger
Jul 14, 2017, 3:54:21 PM7/14/17
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Hi all,
I just posted some answers to the website. One of my research assistants will be following up with some more details. Glad to see this conversation started - hope it's helpful.
Gwen
purple....@gmail.com
Jul 20, 2017, 9:47:12 AM7/20/17
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Finally had time to play with the app a few days ago. Seems like a great app and could definetly be used by Sarah at the landfield or even that student who emailed a few months ago about smells in South LA.
It's really easy to use.
The bummer is that it's not actually forwarding automatically to the Allegheny County Health Department. They probably have someone forwarding them manually. Which could be great because it is easier to scale it to other places.
I am more concern about the security issues tho: no ability for a user to protect their information and no ability to report if they opt out of proving their actual gps coordinates. They should have let individuals pic their cross streets.And given that anyone can download it and submit fake data (like I just did by entering all entries none) that might mean that they are probably going to clean the dataset of all those that are not in the Pittsburgh area to fight off those pesky human beings that might decry citizen science for lack of reliability. So maybe it's not that scalable?
I do get daily push notifications on my phone letting me know how many reports were submitted the previous day or when someone submitted a report with a Level 3 smell (1 being weak - 5 being horrible). Really great idea to keep everyone inform but also a great way to promp people to submit theirs.
Eager to see how it keeps evolving!
Maria
It's really easy to use.
The bummer is that it's not actually forwarding automatically to the Allegheny County Health Department. They probably have someone forwarding them manually. Which could be great because it is easier to scale it to other places.
I am more concern about the security issues tho: no ability for a user to protect their information and no ability to report if they opt out of proving their actual gps coordinates. They should have let individuals pic their cross streets.And given that anyone can download it and submit fake data (like I just did by entering all entries none) that might mean that they are probably going to clean the dataset of all those that are not in the Pittsburgh area to fight off those pesky human beings that might decry citizen science for lack of reliability. So maybe it's not that scalable?
I do get daily push notifications on my phone letting me know how many reports were submitted the previous day or when someone submitted a report with a Level 3 smell (1 being weak - 5 being horrible). Really great idea to keep everyone inform but also a great way to promp people to submit theirs.
Eager to see how it keeps evolving!
Maria
David Mason
Jul 20, 2017, 11:28:29 AM7/20/17
to purple....@gmail.com, plots-airquality, public...@googlegroups.com
Hi Maria,
Was that "South LA" as in Los Angeles or Louisiana? If Los Angeles, I would like to be referred to the person who emailed. I mentioned this app at an architecture/planning group that meets monthly at Los Angeles Trade Tech (a community college) about issues and projects in South-Central L.A. and they found it interesting.
There has also been discussion of trash accumulations and it certainly sounds like this app could be adapted for that as well. Perhaps an added feature, with reports forwarded to another department. And what else? Stray dogs? Gunplay? Drug dealing? Streetwalkers? Potholes? Broken sidewalks? Speeders? Loud mufflers? There must be a long list of quality of life and public safety issues that could be addressed this way.
-David
Was that "South LA" as in Los Angeles or Louisiana? If Los Angeles, I would like to be referred to the person who emailed. I mentioned this app at an architecture/planning group that meets monthly at Los Angeles Trade Tech (a community college) about issues and projects in South-Central L.A. and they found it interesting.
There has also been discussion of trash accumulations and it certainly sounds like this app could be adapted for that as well. Perhaps an added feature, with reports forwarded to another department. And what else? Stray dogs? Gunplay? Drug dealing? Streetwalkers? Potholes? Broken sidewalks? Speeders? Loud mufflers? There must be a long list of quality of life and public safety issues that could be addressed this way.
-David
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Sara Sage
Jul 20, 2017, 1:31:03 PM7/20/17
to Liz Barry, Stevie Lewis, Gretchen Gehrke, plots-airquality, public...@googlegroups.com
Hey guys. This app looks cool and will have to play around with it. We thought about making a bare-bones app for this purpose. Good for them.
We have graduated from noses to sensors here in Val Verde and it is kind of exciting to have equipment to correlate odors with compounds/specific pollutants. VOCs in particular, have a sweetish/chemical smell. On days where we thought there would be high Hydrogen sulfide levels because there was a trash odor, the readings came back with non-detects for H2S and CH4. Whereas, the VOC levels were multitudes higher than WHO ambient air quality standards at the time of sampling.
Without the initial communication and feedback from neighbors reporting odors, it is hard to respond in enough time to capture the odor event. Apps are a lot faster than the web form we created for our community. In fact, most odors are first reported on the Nextdoor app, an easier, faster way to communicate that an odor exists.
Sara
On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 6:26 AM Stevie Lewis <ste...@publiclab.org> wrote:
Ohh this is interesting! Sara has anything happened with the odor log idea lately? Know you've been busy with some other monitoring. What's the latest?Best,Stevie
On Wed, Jul 5, 2017 at 11:37 AM, Liz Barry <eba...@gmail.com> wrote:
This is great! I"ve been wondering about this approach since we were in Val Verde. Hasn't this method of cataloging smell events been very effective in presenting community response to air quality nuisances, like even in just a pen-and-paper way? I feel we've heard of effective community campaigns before, and i'd love to see them presented.
On Mon, Jul 3, 2017 at 11:17 AM, Gretchen Gehrke <gret...@publiclab.org> wrote:
Hi Folks!Yesterday I was listening to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me (clearly the best news source... ;-) ) and learned about this odor reporting app, Smell PGH. It looks interesting and reminds me of the ideas for an odor reporting platform in Val Verde. I wonder if we could do something similar!A couple of my favorite features of this platform are (1) that odor reports are directly transmitted to the county health department and (2) that you can add a topographic layer to the map to help understand how low-lying air may move. I'd love to see what sort of resolution could be achieved with wind direction too.The app was created by the Carnegie Mellon CREATE lab, who also made the Speck particulate matter sensor. They're looking for folks to test out the app and provide feedback. I think it would be great to share feedback an ideas on publiclab.org too, maybe as comments on this odor reporting research note, since odor reporting could really be an effective way to identify pollution sources and/or emissions problems without the onus of demonstrating an air permit violation.It might be useful to compile a list of odor reporting platforms and health department odor reporting procedures out there, to learn from what others have done. Does anyone know of other platforms or have experience reporting odors? If so, reply to this thread or start a wiki on Public Lab and we can start compiling them!Best,Gretchen
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