Captain Planet Belt Buckle: VOC monitoring & reporting

Turning everyday citizens into environmental action superheroes.

Air quality in NYC is bad news.
It’s not something that gives you pleasant dreams at night, or calms you as you pass yet another idling diesel truck.
In an effort to better understand and report my exposure to volatile organic compounds, I’m designing a wearable VOC sensor that:

*monitors and alerts the user to airborne pollutant exposure levels & location
*Tweets the NYC government with GPS location every time the VOC level is a high health risk
*publishes & shares data on Pachube.com

The Captain America Belt Buckle, as I’m currently calling it, will network and report real data in real time while informing the user and those in the immediate environment of health risks.

Programs such as UCLA’s Personal Environmental Impact Report, currently in private beta mode, uses the California Air Resources Board & GPS location, not actual sensors, to model projected exposure for users based on the path of their transit route. Unfortunately, this leaves a significant gap in efforts to take action: how can we remedy the situation if we’re not sure IF it actually happened, or where?

Pachube.com is creating a network of objects, or an Internet of Things (IOT) where objects can interact with each other based on shared data. Pachube founder Usman Haque spoke to our class about the need for citizens to participate in the collection of empirical evidence. I’m interested in communicating this data to affect democratic action, hence connecting sensors to Twitter feeds and people in positions of power.