EPA is soliciting community-engaged research supporting underserved communities to advance the use of air pollution data and communication of air quality information for empowering local decisions and actions to address community-identified air pollution concerns. Particularly of interest is participatory research that aims to inform structural changes that improve air quality in underserved communities overburdened by air pollution. Air pollutants being addressed could be criteria air pollutants or hazardous air pollutants.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to approach the research areas from a multi-disciplinary perspective, including a focus on or integration of social sciences. While the proposed research may focus on specific location(s) and community organization(s) and thus produce tools that are customized to specific needs of those locations and organizations, the research, to the extent possible, should also address needs that might be universal across communities and develop insights and tools that can be generalized and applied, respectively, to other communities in the United States.

Note that this solicitation is intended to support research that utilizes data from existing community air monitoring efforts and/or satellite data; additional field measurements campaigns and deployment of air sensors are allowed provided that the activities address one or both research areas identified below.

Applications should address both research areas described below.

• Research Area 1: Methods and Tools for Data Integration and Analysis – This research area seeks to advance methods and tools that integrate data to inform community exposures to air pollution in underserved communities. Here, integration includes the process of how data are quality assured, harmonized, aggregated, and shared with potential users. Projects should strive to develop methods and tools that can be readily utilized by community members to independently combine and analyze data from multiple sources to address their concerns without requiring detailed knowledge of the underlying analysis tools. These methods and tools should incorporate the performance (accuracy, precision, etc.) of the underlying measurement techniques and be adaptable to inclusion of future data streams (e.g., from networks of new sensors).
• Research Area 2: Communicating to Communities and Decision Makers – This research area seeks research on effectively using air quality information derived from multiple streams to address air pollution concerns in underserved communities.