Search

Renwu is a part of Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, where there are large factories making chemical products. Renwu Elementary School is very close to these factories, just 500 meters away. The school has been actively engaged in discussions about how to improve the environment and promote prosperity for everyone. Approximately 80% of the students at the school have asthma, a respiratory condition. Recognizing the challenges of improving the environment around the school, some students and teachers decided to explore ways to improve the air quality within the school. The students did a few things: first, they used low-cost sensors and single-board computers to make regular air purifiers work better. When levels for air pollution (PM 10 and PM 2.5) are high, these gadgets turn on the air purifiers in many classrooms. This air purifier project is one of three ongoing educational programs aimed at educating students about air pollution and its potential health impacts. In art class, students use paper mache to design their own air purifiers to save money. Using magnifying glasses for tablets and smartphones, they explore which materials work best for air filtration. In parallel, they began collecting air pollution data over time using a digital system developed by the students themselves. They also used hand-held monitors outside to measure pollution levels around a major chemical factory operated by Formosa Plastics, a large petrochemical company. It is worth noting that Formosa Plastics is currently planning to expand its production facilities in Texas and Louisiana, which would also affect air quality in nearby schools. The monitoring and data collection by the Renwu students could inspire others in different places to do something similar about air pollution in their own communities. 

Schütz, Tim, Jia-An Lin & Yu-Hsin Hsu. 2023. "DIY Air Monitoring at Renwu Elementary School in Kaohsiung, Taiwan." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

California Open Data Portal is affiliated with CalData a professional network for data-curious government individuals and partners. CalData is used to advocate for a strong, connected data infrastructure within the government, and provide a digital space where the public can search for all federal datasets at once.

In the “about” section of their website, GovOps acknowledges that they must still continue to work with open data sources, making datasets more accessible to Californians.

Government Operations Agency. California Open Data Portal. 2015. https://data.ca.gov/

The main page on the site immediately directs you to a search bar where you can search for a state agency, topic, or keywords. There is also a guidebook and a public open data training video for a user to learn how to find data and produce data visualizations.

This figure shows a smaller window open within the California State Water Resources Control Board page on Cal Open Data Portal, providing straightforward access to an Excel document displaying a dataset within the state 2019 water quality status report that sampled 1,2,3-trichloropropane, a drinking water contaminant.

Each federal state organization has the number of open datasets listed below them, and is also available to click on to discover those datasets.

Cal Open Data Portal demonstrates that it is able to bring together different datasets from various government agencies. It also allows for open data to be linked across different existing datasets.

Cal Open Data Portal draws data from state agencies. Census tracts can be searched for, for example, searching for Census Tract Disadvantaged Communities 2018, opens a synopsis and map showing each tract and its attributes. However, some of these data sets are linked to GIS programs, meaning they could be layers that are created to add to a map, making it difficult for non-GIS users to navigate and understand. In an attempt to provide assistance with this measure, the website provides a guidebook and a public open data training video for a user to learn how to find data and produce data visualizations. 

California Open Data Portal is designed to host open data from more than one state agency and aims to link all existing state portals in order for California's open data sets to be easily searched for from https://data.ca.gov. Open data or public data is collected through the state's routine business activities and is published in a way that is simple to search for, download, and combine with other data. Open data does not include private or confidential information on individuals.