UnderGrownGreenRoad t1_jcgno3w wrote on March 16, 2023 at 6:16 PM

Reply to comment by PacoTaco321 in Open-source tool from MIT’s Senseable City Lab lets people check air quality, cheaply. by chrisdh79

I would assume it's like a rain gauge. It's nice to see exactly what you have instead of what the weather app/channel says. Even though they are normally close

iRhcp182 t1_jchf5ki wrote on March 16, 2023 at 9:11 PM

What you see in your weather app is very different from what the city scanner shows. How air quality is usually measured is by using 5-6 fixed research grade sensors. The measurements from these stations are used plus some meteorological variables (wind speed+direction, relative humidity, temperature) to model air quality over a larger area. The city scanners however show that air quality can differ a factor 10 on a micro scale. Meaning that these models can wildly over or under estimate air quality at specific locations. These scanners are thus used to create a higher resolution air quality map.