Baltimore wins EPA challenge to collect air quality data

Baltimore is one of two cities to win funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to use sensors to manage air quality.
The city received $40,000 from the Smart City Air Challenge, and could receive another $10,000 after a year.
According to the EPA, the city plans to deploy a network of 300 ozone and nitrogen sensors, built using commercially-available components. The data will be managed through a cloud platform, and be available on the city’s website.
Partners in the effort include Johns Hopkins University, BmoreCool and the Baltimore Office of Sustainability.
The need for monitoring may have played a role in addition to the tech plan. Baltimore, and Maryland as a whole, suffers from notoriously poor air quality, with the city and state each topping respective lists of most deaths from air pollution in a 2013 study.
With the challenge, the EPA is looking to encourage communities to come up with new ways to collect and store the large volumes of data.
The other city to be awarded funding was Lafayette, La. The EPA said it received 22 applications.