Redmond, Washington, USA

Designed by Gabrielle Brussel and Nicolas Clochard-Bossuet at JCDecaux together with Gavin Janke, Lex Story, Asta Roseway, Chuck Needham, and Gabriele D’Amone at Microsoft, the new project Eclipse Air Sensor Transit Shelters have been developed to track the air pollution in Chicago through 100 sensors that were placed atop city bus shelters based on a random sampling of Chicago-area traffic and density data.

Eclipse Air Sensor Transit Shelters in Chicago’s design and sustainable concept recently won a 2022 Green Good Design Award from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

In July 2021, the Project Eclipse team at Microsoft Urban Innovation Research began a partnership with JCDecaux Chicago, LLC and team members from the Array of Things to deploy 100 custom-designed, air quality sensors on Chicago transit shelters in what is one of the densest real-time air quality monitoring networks installed in any major US city.

Project Eclipse’s 2021 air sensor deployment in Chicago has been facilitated through partnerships with The City of Chicago’s Department of Sustainability and the Department of Public Health, the Environmental Law and Policy Center, the City Tech Collaborative, and local environmental justice organizations.

In the fall of 2020, JCDecaux Chicago, LLC, Microsoft’s Urban Innovation Group, and data scientists from the Array of Things team partnered to launch an air quality sensor pilot program in the City of Chicago on 100 JCDecaux bus shelters designed by the architect Robert A.M. Stern to measure and record air quality, temperature, and humidity across the city and throughout various weather conditions and seasonality.

The World Health Organization estimates that 91% of the world’s population lives in places where air quality exceeds guideline limits.

Air pollution is a major concern for cities, given its consequences for human health and the environment.

However, urban areas must assess air quality on a real-time basis to be able to formulate policies to address these challenges.

By using environmental sensors, cities can radically increase the geographic granularity of environmental sensing in support of creating solutions to improve everyday air quality in the urban environment for a variety of public health scenarios.

While air quality is an environmental issue that transcends socioeconomic status, not all neighborhoods experience the same levels of urban pollution.

Proximity to major roadways, airports, and manufacturing centers often leaves lower-income areas of the city exposed to alarming levels of air pollutants.

The infrastructure-less, battery-powered air sensors custom-designed by Urban Innovation’s Project Eclipse team record levels of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone, and nitrogen dioxide in addition to PM 10 and PM 2.5—two of the smallest particulate matters known to enter the bloodstream and lungs.

The ability for large, complex datasets like these to be effectively translated and relayed to the largest possible audience is an important strength of Microsoft’s online, user-friendly Eclipse Platform that displays accurate, hyper-local, and easily digestible air quality index values in real-time.

Additionally, this mobile experience encourages residents to report their feelings on daily air quality and suggests opportunities for action in line with the missions of local environmental advocacy organizations.

This information can be swiftly accessed by Chicago commuters via QR codes posted on the bus shelter faces.

JCDecaux’s comprehensive network of bus shelters allowed Microsoft to ensure both broad and equitable coverage across the city; most sensors were deployed using a random sampling approach that would guarantee data is pulled from areas with varying traffic counts and population densities, while some were allocated to local environmental justice organizations which would select locations within designated neighborhoods with notably high levels of pollutant emissions.

With these environmental sensors, Chicago, a global smart city, is now able to collect precise, citywide data and fine-tune environmental inequality solutions to improve air quality, and the quality of life of its inhabitant, and offer new opportunities for community advocacy.

Project: Eclipse Air Sensor Transit Shelters Chicago
Designers: Microsoft Corporation
Design Team: Gavin Janke, Lex Story, Asta Roseway, Chuck Needham, and Gabriele D’Amone
Manufacturer: JCDecaux Chicago, LLC.
Photographers: Ethan Pombo