These Boston neighborhoods have heat and noise problems. This sensor project is helping address it
The goal of the project is to empower residents with data to back up their lived experiences, explained Dan O’Brien, a Northeastern professor of public policy and urban affairs.
LaToya Johnson, a longtime resident of the Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods, remembers growing up with pollution from cars, trash on the streets and mice burrowing their way into homes.
While some issues have improved, such as the availability of more options for buying fresh and healthy food, she says the environmental concerns of extreme heat, poor air quality, and pollution persist.
“I hear about seniors sitting in parks, and it’s very hot,” she said. “Kids are running around and they are breathing in things that we don’t even know about.”
Circumstances may be changing for the better thanks to a partnership with Northeastern University, the city of Boston’s Office of Emerging Technology, and a few neighborhood organizations.
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Now, Johnson and residents like her will have data to support what they’ve long experienced.
That’s because Northeastern researchers and students have installed more than 70 environmental sensors in the Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods as part of the Common SENSES project, a new community-led research initiative using data to improve the city’s public infrastructure.
The goal of the project is to empower residents with data to back up their lived experiences, explained Dan O’Brien, a Northeastern professor of public policy and urban affairs.
O’Brien is also the director of the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI), a multi-university collaboration that uses science and technology to help inform the city’s public policy and infrastructure changes.
“For residents to be bolstered by hard data — a sensor tracking every day what it feels like to live in a space — that can pack a little bit of extra heft and punch for their advocacy and for actions that might follow,” O’Brien, one of the principal investigators of the project, said.
The sensors are collecting round-the-clock data on heat index classifications, sound pollution levels and overall air quality. That data can be viewed in real-time on interactive maps posted on the project’s website.
Northeastern is working closely with two neighborhood community organizations on the project — the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, of which Johnson is a board member, and Project R.I.G.H.T, which represents the Greater Grove Hall neighborhood.
In total, the researchers installed 74 sensors at locations based on feedback they received from more than a hundred residents at community workshops and public forums they hosted before the project started, explained O’Brien.
Fifty-one of the 74 sensors were built in-house at Northeastern and are being used to measure heat and noise, explained Amy Mueller, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University and a co-principal investigator.
No bigger than desktop lamps, each of the units come equipped with a battery pack and a commercially available solar charging system to ensure the sensors have enough energy to function, a cellular modem to transmit the data wirelessly, and a SD card to also store data within the device, said Kriish Hate, a second-year engineering master’s degree student at Northeastern University who played a key role in their development and manufacturing of the sensors.
The other 23 sensors are being used to collect air quality and were bought commercially, Mueller said.
Now, the groups will use the sensor data to try and make real changes for those communities, O’Brien said.
Vikiana Petit-Homme, a community organizer at the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, said the data helps put front and center issues residents have long known as real pain points.
In the coming days and weeks, the organizations will begin to have conversations on how to use the data to advocate for real changes in the community.
“We have these stories. We now need to do more intentional research, observing the data and making clearer connections,” she said.
The city’s Office of Emerging Technology has been a key player since the beginning, helping Northeastern researchers get the clearances with the city’s public works department to install the sensors on the city’s light posts.
The project is in the process of recruiting community data observers to help track the information the sensors pick up, explained Roua Atamaz Sibai, a climate technology strategist in the emerging technology office.
Michael Lawrence Evans, director of the Office of Emerging Technology for the city of Boston, said he is hopeful that this project will help bring new green infrastructure to the neighborhoods to help alleviate problems with air quality and extreme heat.
They are also considering collaborating with the neighborhood groups to issue monthly reports outlining findings and next steps, Sibai said.
“Similarly to how the community chose where those sensors were put and what kind of data is going to be collected, [they can help answer] what can we do with that data. What do the neighborhoods need?” Sibai said.
