Climate Sensing for Environmental Futures is an ongoing project/course at Parsons School of Design (Transdisciplinary Design MFA program and Parsons DESIS Lab) that investigates new roles and forms of citizen engagement related to climate change in the decades to come. Our specific case study has been air quality in urban settings.

In 2016 we learned about NASA new satellite TEMPO to be launched in 2020 that will monitor air quality in North America producing unprecedented high resolution (pixel size of 1km x 1km) hourly data. We are intrigued by how would the data produced by the satellite impact the daily life of urban dwellers and potentially change the way we relate and engage with climate. We also noted the increasingly popularity and affordability of new physical computing and sensing technology, from the “bottom-up” using the increasingly popular and affordable air pollution devices and systems such as SmartCitizen and Speck. We also looked into the key role played by environmental justice groups such as WeAct, a well-know not-for-profit based in West Harlem dedicated to environmental justice and advocacy, that through environmental monitoring and data analysis, reveal how air pollution affects communities of color in a disproportionate way.

Questions driving our work to date

• What are the potential roles of citizen engagement in climate change?
• How can new technologies and citizen-based data collection enable democratized environmental action in meaningful ways?
• Can bottom-up practices such as citizen sensing, citizen science and street science (Corburn, 2005) inform and change top-down government services, policy and legislation?
• What is the correlation between more knowledge about the local environment and possible changes towards more sustainable practices and lifestyles?
• Can different environmental sensing practices help define a new form of environmental citizenship that combines social and technical capabilities?
• What are the roles that different sensing practices can play, from remote sensing through satellites and airborne instruments, to new physical computing and sensing technology, as well as low tech sensing techniques ?
• Can sensing and monitoring practices be tactic for citizen engagement with climate and environmental concerns (Gabrys, 2016)?
• How would younger generations relate to climate sensing practices as the effects of climate change become increasingly evident?

A group Transdisciplinary Design graduate students at Parsons started responding to these challenges in 2016 producing three scenarios with a common underlying principle of bringing environmental data and scientific language closer to regular people.

See students’ projects HERE