Comment Log Display

The ECV agricultural areas have a very different air quality than
the western Coachella Valley. The western valley has blow sand with
high winds and periodic issues with PM10. The Eastern valley (ECV)
has agriculture and the Salton Sea. There is only one number for
the AQI for the entire valley with similar geographical areas in
the South Coast AQMD having up to 5 different AQIs. The first part
of this question is how do we petition to have the CV split up into
two AQI numbers for the North West and South East Coachella Valley?
 There are now 4 to 5 regulatory sensors throughout the valley and
the resolution for  two different AQIs is possible. 
The research part of this question is to look into the inclusion of
low cost sensors (or medium cost intermediate sensors) into the
AQI.  There are also several low cost sensors throughout the valley
that could help build this resolution for an AQI, at least using
PM2.5 from Purple Air sensors. With the EPA Air Now as one of the
only outlets to promise to integrate low cost sensors in the near
future, much more work needs to be done to build a tool that
integrates the many types of low cost sensors. As an example, the
SCAQMD uses purpleair sensors, has the AQSPEC and has hosted
intermediate cost Aeroqual AQY1 sensors which are highly useful for
NO2, Ozone, and PM2.5. The limitation is that many of the AQ SPEC
sensors use a proprietary web access format requiring a password.
We need research to explore how to integrate the many different
brands of sensors to a much more localized AQI. This is a research
topic and I would like to know how the CARB is intending on
exploring and funding this rapidly developing technology. The
output should be an AQI with a much better resolution that the
public can use.