Three years ago, on March 29, 2023, the original members of what we now call the AirKeeper Dashboard Collaborative had our first virtual convening. The participants were members of our Community Science network (AirKeepers) who host Purple Air monitors to help measure hyperlocal air quality, and a dedicated team from CleanAIRE NC. The purpose was to co-create a tool that would provide AirKeepers with access to data from their monitors, pair it with context on potential causes of impaired air quality, and share information on related health impacts to communities. In that initial meeting, as we all virtually shook hands and learned a little about each other’s communities, none of us could have imagined what a powerful tool we would build together.
Community input, CleanAIRE NC’s air quality and advocacy expertise, and technical solutions and engineering from our partners at Eastern Research Group are the building blocks of this tool. We would meet, brainstorm on what we would want the tool to do, prioritize the most important aspects, and let the designers do their work. Over the course of two years, CleanAIRE NC oversaw the production in weekly meetings with the development team. We periodically convened to share with our collaborators what we had accomplished, gather more feedback, and continue tweaking the system. This collaborative insight loop enabled the concept of an air quality tool for AirKeepers to burgeon into a dynamic interactive space for a variety of users.
By the Spring of 2025, we had built a product that we were almost ready to launch to the public. The newly named AirKeeper Dashboard (AKD) would be able to visualize data, study trends, and build reports to support advocacy efforts to protect communities and their environments across North Carolina. Yet before we went live, we wanted to open our beta version to a new set of collaborators to validate what we hoped to be true of the Dashboard. These beta testers helped us catch and fix errors, improve the appearance and functionality, and even add new datasets and features to the AKD. The collective effort led to a highly successful launch in June of 2025, during which we gained interest from community members across the state as well as other advocates, researchers, and even government officials.
With the vital help of key funders, data partnerships, and continued user feedback through the AKD Collaborative, CleanAIRE NC is committed to continually updating and improving our tool. In fact, we have a major new release planned for Fall 2026! Over the past two months, we have heard from collaborators about how they want us to take the AKD to the next level, and we plan to deliver.
As CleanAIRE NC’s AirKeeper Dashboard & GIS Manager, I want to take this opportunity to express tremendous thanks to our AKD Collaborative Network. And if you are reading this now and haven’t yet had the chance, I want you to know that you, too, can be a part of this effort. The AirKeeper Dashboard is for anyone who cares about air quality and health in North Carolina, and CleanAIRE NC is here for you.
