Making a Visible Difference (MVD) in/NE Portland: Engaging Communities, Using Citizen Science to Assess and Address Children's Environmental Health from Transit and Air Pollution

This is an EPA Region 10 ‘Making a Visible Difference’ (MVD) in/NE Portland, OR project. The objective of this project is to leverage existing partnerships between EPA Region 10 and communities in/NE Portland, Oregon. The aim is to engage academia, local community members, government and health partners to consider their voices in developing transit and neighborhood scenarios for school children’s bus routes and bus stop. The project focuses particularly on pollution sources, reduction and potential mitigation measures. This research allows for citizen science activities and the use of a suite of EPA tools such as: EJ Screen (the public version to provide a first look at mapping community issues); C-FERST (the pre-development version, to provide detailed environmental and community characterization and assessment); C-LINE (a modeling and visualization system for traffic related air pollutant exposure) and other EPA science tools such as EnviroAtlas (for community environmental modeling). The vision for this project is to make a visible difference with citizen science such that it becomes a bridge for the community to independently uncover links and solutions to local environmental concerns.