The most present risk to derailing our team’s progress is getting our parts delivered in a timely manner. While currently this does not seem to be affecting the team’s schedule, the current mitigation is to focus our weekly effort on parts of the project that don’t require any physical components such as the website. This mitigation will evolve as parts come in which may require modifications to the schedule to suit the parts that we have on hand but such measures are not currently needed. It seems that the LoRa network parts will arrive first so in accordance with our schedule this should be the first task requiring physical components completed but this has not happened yet.
Presently there have been no changes to the system design of the SNIFF project nor any changes to the schedule of the team’s effort.
Part A:
Project SNIFF will be addressing the public health issue of lack of coverage in air quality monitoring and measurement in the Pittsburgh area. With SNIFF data supplements, there will be more data collected for a larger spread of land than originally, and people who live in or frequent the area covered gain more assurance of their wellbeing when spending time in an area. While Project SNIFF does not directly address the issue of air pollution, it promotes awareness and provides more localized data. With air quality measurement supplements, not only can individuals observe the air pollution in their vicinity without as large of gaps and blindspots, but sources of highly concentrated pollution should be easier to trace with more data points of where the pollution was first measured and where it spreads.
Part B:
Project SNIFF will influence public policy by showing lawmakers which areas in Pittsburgh need air quality relief. This may entail traffic projects to reduce congestion in impacted areas, redirection of highways, or better air quality monitoring infrastructure in the area. SNIFF data may be used as a powerful lobbying tool for social groups impacted by bad air quality to advocate for better conditions. Making air quality data collection directly tied to riding bicycles involves citizens in science, motivating ordinary people to ride more POGOH bikes. This not only provides more data to the SNIFF project and to those whose neighborhoods are covered by POGOH bike rides, but also funds POGOH to invest more in bikeshare and reduces cars on the road, improving air quality. In this way, SNIFF encourages a culture of bicycling, much like societies in the Netherlands or Japan. This leads to better cycling infrastructure, safer streets, and better walking conditions for pedestrians.
Part C:
Project SNIFF will be meeting economic factors by addressing the gaps in air quality measurement that are largely along socioeconomic lines. With the phase 3 expansion of POGOH into historically disadvantaged neighborhoods such as Homewood our SNIFF system would be able to address the gaps in air quality measurement in these neighborhoods. When looking at the existing air quality maps there is significantly more monitoring stations in wealthier neighborhoods like Squirrel Hill allowing wealthier residents of the city to know the quality of the air they are breathing while leaving the poorer residents without this critical knowledge. This is even more impactful when considering the other social determinants of health that lead to poorer people dealing with worse health conditions and lacking the means to treat these conditions in the American health system. By providing a low cost means to measure air quality lower income neighborhoods can be provided access to this important health data without the large cost of installing stationary ground measurement stations.
A was written by Stella, B was written by Jaehyun and C was written by John.
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