The Resident Task Force
Community based partnerships driving informed research questions
What is the Resident Task Force?
The Breathe Providence Resident Task Force is a cohort of frontline community members who share concerns about air pollution and environmental justice in Providence. The Task Force is working with Breathe Providence and the REJC to identify and investigate air pollution rooted in members' lived experiences.
The Task Force has focused on the issues of noxious odors near the Port of Providence, and indoor air quality at schools built on contaminated sites. One of our biggest successes has been our deepened understanding gained from firsthand experiential data. The Task Force recognizes that lived experiences are an important data source, particularly the experiences of people whose voices have historically been marginalized.
By crowd-sourcing information, the Resident Task Force is hoping to help community members transform their individual experiences into a collective dataset. This dataset may help to give shape to the problem of noxious odors, narrow in on odor sources, and inform potential mitigation strategies. Crowdsourcing may also prove especially important data collection method for odors because what causes them might not be captured by traditional air monitors.
In an effort to explore methods of capturing residents’ experiences, members of the Task Force, the Breathe Providence project, and the REJC are using an odor tracking app called Smell My City. Developed by the CREATE Lab, Smell My City allows people to report unusual odors that might be caused by pollution. Users can rank the odor on a scale of 1 to 5, describe the odor, and list any health symptoms associated with it. The app automatically records the time and place of each report (locations are changed slightly to protect privacy).
What is the Resident Task Force up to now?
Anyone can download the Smell My City App, share their experience, and contribute to the data set!
How can I be involved with the Smell My City Task Force goals?
What have we smelled so far?
Based on descriptors used in reports, we are attempting to classify the types of odors documented on the app! We hope to update our data page soon with more specific outcomes from this research question.
