COMPASS is collaborating closely with Charlie Catlett and his Array of Things Project at the Computation Institute @UChicago and at Argonne National Lab. The Array of Things is a networked urban sensor project that’s changing our understanding of cities and urban life. The sensors are being collocated in Chicago (and COMPASS) communities and represent an unprecedented opportunity for understanding of community level differences in air quality and the relative impact on health disparities.
What does this really mean? Rather than using complicated statistical models to estimate exposure to particulate matter (aka PM2.5), we will be able to use real measures in our investigations of health effects.
This represents a major step forward as preliminary data suggest that Chicagoans are exposed to very different levels of particulate matter….far greater than what the statistical models have suggested previously. Simply put, this likely means that our measurement of exposure to air pollution will be better.
