[Smokey Interviews] Christa Hasenkopf, Founder of OpenAQ

We’re super excited to launch this interview series today called Smokey’s Friends , where Smokey interviews influencers in the air quality world. In case you haven’t met Smokey yet — Smokey is the world’s first and only real-time air quality chatbot. Just send him a message and he will reply in a jiffy.

Today we meet Christa Hasenkopf, the co-founder of OpenAQ. Let’s get right into it.

Why does the world need OpenAQ?

“OpenAQ is a community of people who are working together to gather and use air quality data around the world.

OpenAQ is needed because currently, there’s no other entity that gathers, puts in a universal format, and makes freely available air quality data. These data can be used for all kinds of things, from critical research for air pollution policy applications to giving the public important real-time messages about how precautions to take during poor air quality periods. In addition to the data, we think it’s really important there’s an umbrella, global community that helps amplify and connect what local communities are doing to fight air inequality with each other.”

Tell us about yourself. What got you interested in air pollution?

I was working on my PhD in atmospheric science at the University of Colorado, and specifically worked on better understanding how the atmosphere of Titan — a moon of Saturn — works. Kind of crazy, but as it turns out, the atmosphere of Titan is filled with smoke-like organic particulate matter. This work was cool, but as I was finishing up my degree, I really wanted to do work that more focused here on Earth and impacted people directly. Long story short, I realized I could apply the same skills I got in grad school in studying ‘air quality’ on Titan to air quality on Earth.

As for the open data part that is essential to my work now, while living and doing air pollution research in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, I learned what it feltlike to live in extremely poor air quality. It seemed like such an injustice to so many people around the world to grow up, work, and live every day in air that feels like it is choking you. More than the research I was doing, I felt like the biggest way that I could help improve the situation was by making more air quality data available to the community so they could do powerful stuff with it.

If you hadn’t co-founded OpenAQ, what would you be doing today?

Before starting OpenAQ, I was working at the US Department of State, on programs that help understand and protect the diplomatic community from poor air quality in locations around the world. The work was cool, especially because I got to learn about the “cutting edge” of air quality and health science — which is in understanding health impacts in highly polluted places. Surprisingly, there are fewer health studies that focus on highly polluted air than air, say, you’d find in the EU or the US. This also made me realize how truly open data can help close those research gaps.

And if I were a little taller or perhaps born in the future, I would have loved to try to become an astronaut!

If you had a magic wand, what would you tell everyone in the world about air pollution?

Air pollution affects billions of people, and it one of the truly biggest global public health problems our time. But the fortunate thing about the problem is that it really is entirely solvable in our lifetimes, and not something we have to wait for a new technological breakthrough to solve. Solving pollution is something that takes sustained commitment to a feedback cycle of trying out policy solutions, using open data to transparently evaluate them, and then to use that information to iterate on the solution further.

What’s next for OpenAQ this year?

Over the next year, we plan to keep adding in more sources, and we hope to find more people who can help us do that. Besides the Delhi workshop, we are hoping to hold a couple more around the world, depending on where people ask us to come or where we see a need. We’re also exploring adding in new data types, like data from low-cost sensors.

Tell us about the upcoming Delhi workshop!

November 25 & 26, we’ll be going to Delhi to meet all kinds of enthusiastic and passionate people fighting air inequality. The goal of our workshop is to share what people all over the globe are working on in our open air quality community, and to brainstorm new ways the group can utilize open data in their work — and to work together — in the context of Delhi’s air quality issues. The cool thing is, anything the group develops will be shared with the wider OpenAQ community, so a cool new open-source tool could be used not just in Delhi, but India, Indonesia, or Iceland! Applications to attend the workshop are available here!

What’s the best way for someone interested in OpenAQ to get started?

There are so many ways to get involved, and it really depends on someone’s interests and skillsets. The best way to start getting ideas is to jump on ourSlack channel and say hi!

Would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or a 100 duck-sized horses?

One horse-sized duck, for sure! Because I think it may be easier to fight one big thing then 100 small things…and if I lost, at least I lost to something pretty big (and weird).