Office of Research & Development | April 2022

United States
Environmental
Protection Agency

AEPA

Participatory Science

Data Management Case Studies

Urban Heat ATL

UrbanHeatATL

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*Environmerital Protection Agency [Contract No.
GS-35F-410DA] to Information International Associates, INC.


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Urban Heat ATL

Improving Data Management for Participatory Science

UrbanHeatATL is a new community-based participatory science project to map temperature data in
Atlanta. Students and other volunteers use inexpensive mobile temperature sensors while walking or
biking to collect data for mapping urban heat extremes at meter-scale resolution, allowing for solutions to
be targeted at the most vulnerable communities. Data is collected via smartphone and mapped, along
with data from stationary sensors and from a single-day NOAA event spanning multiple cities, to indicate
heat islands.

Project Overview & Goals

UrbanHeatATL is an academic and
community-based participatory science
project to collect temperature data in Atlanta
to determine who is most impacted by
today's urban heat hotspots, and how
communities can work with officials to
mitigate these impacts as heat waves
worsen in coming decades. There is already
a lot known about heat islands, so the
UrbanHeatATL Team is focused on
gathering the data across Atlanta to support
community-based recommendations for
mitigating the impacts, provide storytelling
opportunities for community narratives, and
support decision-making around community
claims. UrbanHeatATL also establishes
partnerships for the co-design of solutions.
The UrbanHeatATL team is a collaboration
between the Spelman College
Environmental and Health Sciences
Program, the West Atlanta Watershed
Alliance, the Partnership for Southern
Equity, the City of Atlanta, and at Georgia
Tech, the Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain,
the Urban Climate Lab, and the Global
Change Program. The project launched in
March 2021 with in-kind support from the
Atlanta Science Festival.

Role of Project Participants

Approximately 40 students from Georgia
Tech and Spelman College began the data
collection using small temperature sensors



Issue:

Urban Heat

Location:

Atlanta, Georgia

Tools:

Mobile & stationary
temperature
sensors

Contact:

Na'Taki Jelks
Kim Cobb

that they connected to '
their smartphones via
the vendor's app, with
guidance from the
UrbanHeatATL team.

The program has since
grown to over 80
students as well as 10
community members
from southwest Atlanta.

UrbanHeatATL
provides sensor
packets to volunteers along with short
instructional videos accessible via
smartphones. Students and volunteers
cover Atlanta on foot or bike. Other
volunteers monitor and service one of ten
stationary sensors that the UrbanHeatATL
team installed at points of interest identified
by community members.

Data Management

In 7 months, UrbanHeatATL has collected
more than 1.5 million air temperature data
points in over 350 hours since the project
began in March 2021. Students and
community volunteers' email or upload the
mobile sensor data via smartphone to a
server at Georgia Tech. The data
undergoes a QA/QC process to detect
potential errors. Since the program is
relatively new, most data quality issues
derive from user error as well as data
artifacts and biases associated with the
sensor itself. The program is just beginning

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to address sensor calibration, and based on
early QA/QC data, is undertaking a redesign
of the sensor probe in partnership with the
vendor to eliminate as many data artifacts
as possible.

Mobile sensor data are combined with
temperature data from stationary sensors
and, most recently, high-powered mobile
sensors as part of a single-day NOAA heat
island project in 20 cities across the country.
At this point, the three sensor inputs are
aggregated but are not used for cross-
validation. Following processing by a series
of scripts, the data are stored in a repository
in CSV format without a database.

Data Use

UrbanHeatATL uses the data within the
project to map urban heat islands in Atlanta,
especially as they relate to the impacts on
frontline communities, and the role of urban
greenspace, city planning, and energy
burden in shaping environmental justice
priorities. The project is just beginning to
overlay health, demographic and economic
data with the temperature data.

Issues and Lessons Learned

The project, while in its early phases, has
gone very smoothly and has not
encountered any significant technical or
non-technical issues. Addressing the user
experience related to the mobile sensors
earlier in the project would have allowed the
project to scale up more quickly, particularly
in terms of the number of community
volunteer participants. The principal
investigators have been surprised by the
degree of student and community
engagement and media interest and
support. The investigators have spent time
aggregating smaller funding sources to

retain paid interns while pursuing larger
federal grant awards.

Outcomes and Success Factors

The collection of relevant data that lends
credibility and validity to anecdotes
regarding the impact of urban heat in
Atlanta is filling a void. Through its outreach
activities, UrbanHeatATL has brought
awareness of the issue to the public and
targeted decision makers. Based in part on
the work of UrbanHeat ATL, Atlanta was
chosen as one of 20 cities to participate in
NOAA's Urban Heat Watch Day.

Major success factors include having
decision makers and trusted community
partners at the table from the beginning and
a close collaboration with the sensor
vendor.

Opportunities

•	Share what it is learning with other
stakeholders and across its spheres
of influence to help people
understand the value and utility of
participatory science (PS) data.

•	Share data collection devices,
protocols, and QA/QC
methodologies as transferable
infrastructure.

•	Formalize Communities of Practice
in areas of interest that would bring
PS projects together to form
networks.

•	Develop a framework for PS projects
to more easily respond or ramp up to
respond to federal (especially EPA)
procurement opportunities.

•	Provide a framework for addressing
some of the questions around data
ownership, the rights of the

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community, data use, shared
funding models, etc.

• Initiate activities to support peer-to-
peer sharing to reduce the level of
reinvention that small PS projects
currently go through.

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