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​​#AirHack

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​​24-25 February 2017

​​ODI Leeds

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​​Welcome to #AirHack! Two days of collaboration, innovation, and fun to tackle the issues surrounding air quality in Leeds (and beyond).

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​​Challenge

​​Smarter Behaviour, Cleaner Air

​​'How do we encourage user behaviour to change in relation to air pollution?' There are many contributory factors in air quality, but perhaps the biggest is emissions from transport. A busy network inevitably causes hotspots, where excess traffic causes more emissions. Can routes be planned better to relieve those hotspots? Could regular road users be encouraged to use alternative transport? Is it time for extreme measures - should cars and other vehicles be held to account for their emissions?

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​​Data-powered Citizens

​​'How do we engage local citizens and encourage them to take an active part in the environment around them?' With open data, everyone can be involved. Instead of relying on data scientists based in local councils or organisations, could local people help crunch numbers, gather data, make changes, tell data stories? What should we be measuring? What are we actually breathing everyday?

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​​Better Air, Better You

​​Living near heavy traffic increases dementia risk - The Guardian

​​Air pollution damaging your mental health - New Statesman

​​Stories like those above broke within the first month of a new year, and London famously broke it's yearly emissions limit in the first WEEK. What are the effects to our health and can they be tracked? And what could be done about it? Who can or should be helping?

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​​Modelling - The Naked Truth

​​A majority of air quality predictions are actually modelled, based on various sources of information such as weather forecasts, emissions factors, etc. But these can be influenced by mistakes in those sources. A glaring example - the emissions scandal that hit several car manufacturers. Anything modelled using the scam emissions factors would be far from what was really happening. So how do we strip these models bare? How do we get accurate and honest modelling? Would the use of real time sensors and reporting fix the issue of inaccuracies? If yes, then how do we get it all to work together?

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​​Bring your own challenges

​​The above challenges were identified from the Open Meeting we held in January but they are by no means the only challenges you can work on. If you have an idea of your own that you'd like to bring with you, please do! :) 

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​​Datasets

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​​We are compiling a list of datasets at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/124GoDNI8_zEHQI6f6bi4OXAdESRlMB7MmdXB44WTouw/edit#gid=0

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​​Calderdale DataWorks - https://dataworks.calderdale.gov.uk/dataset?q=air&sort=score+desc%2C+metadata_modified+desc 

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​​Data Mill North https://datamillnorth.org/dataset?tags=airhack

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​​Defra - UK Air - https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/

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​​Not a dataset but still interesting - http://plumeplotter.com/

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​​Other Assets

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​​Put your projects, outputs, ideas, etc, below :)

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​​Promote active travel- Route planning.

​​Help people work out best way to get to work on foot/bike avoiding road accident blackspots (got data https://datamillnorth.org/community/blog/investigating-road-traffic-casualties-in-leeds/) areas of poor air quality (got the data?) and lowest traffic levels (got data?) . So a visualisation/route planning tool to drive changes in behaviour and encourage more walking and cycling commuting (got data on cycling routes http://datamillnorth.org/dataset/cycle-routes-in-leeds).