Luminair

Team Name

Digital Thinks

Team Members

Project Description

The Digital Thinks 'Luminair' project uses environmental and IoT data to explore questions and opportunities for health, wellbeing, placemaking, sustainability and awareness around air quality. Through commonalities and patterns of data locally and nationally, we consider how air quality data can be collated and visualised.

Contributing to public spaces, community awareness and education, the project proposes incorporating environmental data into public art such as visual lighting indicators to inform community and support individuals and communities in making informed decisions day-to-day for improved health, wellbeing and sustainability.

Data Story

Luminair takes air quality data from several datasets across australia, where dedicated air monitoring stations and Internet of Things (IoT) data is being collected. Data sources include:

• Queensland Government 'Townsville Coast Guard (Townsville) 2012 hourly air quality and meteorological data' and 'Air Quality Monitoring - Live data feed'
• CSIRO 'Sydney Particle Studies 1 - Aerosol and gas data collection' and 'Sydney Particle Studies 2 - Aerosol and gas data collection'
• SEED 'Lower Hunter particle characterisation study' and 'Current Air Quality Page - live data'
• City of Darwin PM10 IoT
• Liverpool Smart Pedestrian project Pedestrian and Air Quality Sensor Data

All datasets include a 'PM10' air quality reading relating to particle matter in the air that can be used to measure impacts on health and wellbeing impacts from exposure based on air quality standards. Other comparable attributes include location, date and time.

Each source dataset has been gathered from the listed repositories and consumed as an excel or API for a point in time measure and comparison. Historical data is available for some datasets to also measure change and trends over time.

Data has been collated into a table to draw insights and explore questions raised from the proposed challenges and ideas generated within the project.

Taking a design thinking approach to the challenges and data, we have explored questions like

• How is environmental data being captured and presented?
• How might we overlay information to gather insight?
• How might we present it to people to understand what's happening locally, nationally and globally?
• How might visualising and presenting data through public art provide greater awareness and calls to action?
• What might future cities look like with integration of environmental data?

In combining these datasets, we've started to make some observations about air quality in various places and nationally. We can see that air quality is generally good or very good, however another quick observation is that the highest and lowest readings to vary greatly in the same place.

With more time and consideration beyond GovHack, there would be a great opportunity to look at standardising data being published around air quality to be able to benchmark and paint a picture of air quality locally, nationally and globally

The idea we'd like to proposed beyond the GovHack weekend is to integrate air quality data into public spaces and art. It could be as simple as a colour changing light on a pole, to show an easy visual indicator, or more detailed displays that change and adapt, based on conditions.

• 'ilight singapore' has demonstrated large scale light installations interpreting data. How could we do this in Australia?
• Melbourne is sensing air quality on street lights, could they instantly display air quality at the same time?
• Could a dynamic public installation show dust, smoke or rain 30 minutes upwind so that we have time to leave the playground and get home before a hazard hits?

Visual indicators can have a great impact on peoples experience in a city or place, and increase accessibilty of the data being publicly available and easy to consume.

Our future cities and environment will depend on how we plan them, and also how we use them. Through combination and collaboration, we are able to generate new insights, share more information and increase community accessibility and wellbeing.

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While exploring air quality data over the GovHack weekend, we have also tested consuming air quality API to provide instant and personalised notifications to customers and communities.

Using recipe builder IFTTT, a prototype of using the Webhooks function to send notifications was tested to be able to send an instant email to an individual when air quality changes to poor.

Using Microsoft Flow we were also able to prototype a combination of steps that call the API once an hour, parse the measurement received and push notifications to a chosen device.

This was omitted from the video due to time constraints of producing a max. 3 minute video. Supporting screen shots are in the supporting evidence of work folder.