Researchers from MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) have worked closely with citizens on Hawaii Island for several years to monitor air quality from the volcano using low-cost sensors. The researchers were even planning to launch a large-scale air quality project funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but the emergency conditions created by Kilauea starting in the spring of last year, and the urgent demands for air pollution data from community groups and state government officials, prompted the MIT researchers to jump into action months before schedule.

“We realized that because we’d been building these instruments for measuring gases and particles relatively quickly and inexpensively, we had the tools to help people in Hawaii understand the quality of the air they were breathing,” says Jesse Kroll, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and chemical engineering, who leads the air quality research projects across the island with Colette Heald, a CEE professor. “In a period of just about two weeks, we organized this effort in which we built a number of sensor boxes and came over here to Hawaii to try to put them up all over the island.”