2022-2024 Latrobe Prize Progress Update

By Michelle Laboy, Amy Mueller, Dan O'Brien, and Moira Zellner

We had a successful launch to our 2022-2024 Latrobe Prize "Common Senses: Standards for Enacting Sensor Networks for an Equitable Society". Since signing the contract we advanced our work in the main areas of research:

Community Engagement and Data Visualization

Our first priority during this time has been relationship building with stakeholders around the area of the study, including city officials and community members. Given the intense workload on most community groups working in environmental justice communities, we needed to explore which groups have the need and capacity to engage in the research, understand their areas of concern, identify where the research can best serve the community, and what resources would be needed. We had three meetings with stakeholders where we discussed goals, demo the tools, identified data needs, and discuss potential approaches to community engagement and data visualization.

• June 1st, 2022: Virtual meeting – project introduction, identify potential scope and timeline

• August 4th, 2022: In person meeting: exploring goals, identifying needs and priorities

• September 8th, 2022: Hybrid meeting Virtual / In person at Chelsea City Hall - demo of fora.ai and BARI portal.

Sensor Network

In order to begin designing a sensor network we worked to understand the current urban development context and planned changes in the next few years, as well as to identify how this changing context informs community priorities about what to measure, when to measure and why. We hosted two meetings focused on sensors, with representatives from the City of Chelsea, North Suffolk Office of Sustainability and Resilience (NSoSR), and other community leaders and researchers interested in sensor networks. These two meetings, on September 22nd and November 10th helped identify:

• Community priorities in order:

• Heat

• Air pollution

• Noise

• Natural gas leaks (not related but has been repeated many times)

• Drivers of concern are mostly related to health, especially as related to diesel traffic.

• Mapped areas of interest and preliminary sensor locations

• Timeline: winter measurements would not be worth the risk of damage, given construction timeline. Identified sensors to be used with expected deployment in Spring 2023.

Architectural Design and Green Infrastructure

In addition to literature review, analysis of existing project documentation and field surveys, we organized a series of discussions around the current development project that the city of Chelsea had identified as a potential area of interest, with the goal of defining how our modeling of impacts may inform how stakeholders think about future projects and their potentials for green infrastructure in the area:

• August 8th, 2022: In person meeting at office of new developer (team that acquired permitted property after award of Latrobe Prize) for baseline project at 22 Willow to discuss research goals, design and construction timeline. Developer updated our team on delay in demolition due to tenant relocation. Obtained commitment for collaboration and permission to install sensors on site.

• October 17th, 2022: meeting with Architecture and Development team to discuss performance goals and project history. We discussed their interest in doing a demo of the modeling tool to compare performance of existing and future conditions around development project.

• November 29th, 2022: Virtual meeting with City of Chelsea for planning of upcoming meeting (January 2023) with representatives of city departments to evaluate usefulness of science-driven modeling process for development projects. Discussed a list of potential development projects in design and related community groups that may be able to engage with to explore green infrastructure.

Participatory Modeling

This first stage of the project involved data gathering and adapting the existing tool fora.ai to the area of study in preparation for the work with the city.

• Computational Modeling of Chelsea context for flooding based on:

• Inputs for elevation, land cover, vegetation and sewers based on public datasets, satellite imagery, and public documents. These inputs will be refined and verified in an ongoing a field survey.

• Field survey, performed by a research assistant using an ESRI mobile application, currently collecting other types of data used, such as flooding damages, and inputs that are only available at lower resolution or with high imprecision (e.g., tree canopy coverage).

• Groundwater database for a comparable fill coastline nearby (East Boston)

• Validated outputs of flooding model with previous engineering model:

• After adapting L-GrID flooding with Chelsea data, we docked it with a model created by Dewberry Engineers Inc. for the City of Chelsea. Results for a 10-year, 24-hour storm in the area around the Willow Street site were very similar for both models.

• Adapting fora.ai for heat:

• fora.ai was developed for flooding, and therefore needs to be adapted to other hazards of interest. We are implementing a simplified energy balance model with dynamic estimates of solar radiation. Low building heights allow simpler accounting for heat storage in air. We are working to identify outcomes of interest for stakeholders related to urban heat, e.g. simple relationships between air temperature, indoor heat, and health. Development of the model also guided the types of data collected in the field survey (mentioned above).

We are excited to continue this work and grateful for your support. Sincerely,

2022-2024 Latrobe Prize Research Team:

Michelle Laboy

Amy Mueller

Dan O’Brien

Moira Zellner