The Bay Air Center is a Bay Area Air District (Air District)-sponsored community resource that provides technical guidance, materials, and training to Bay Area community members and organizations, free of charge, to support their efforts to understand and improve air quality. The Bay Air Center team helps communities engage with the Bay Area Air District on local-scale air monitoring and community air quality concerns by providing guidance, training, and educational resources. The Bay Air Center offers hands-on technical support and access to a team of experts who help partners plan and conduct air monitoring projects, analyze and interpret data, and build knowledge and capacity to better understand local air quality conditions and take informed action.
Learn more about our services below:
Educational Workshops on Air Quality
Provide air quality workshops for community members and organizations across the Bay Area.
Our team can:
- Provide advice on workshop topics, structure, and audience needs
- Help develop locally relevant and accessible educational content
- Provide facilitator training to prepare staff and volunteers to train others
- Assist with or lead event coordination
- Coordinate interpretation and language access services
- Example topics include: Air pollution
basics, how to find and use air quality
data, understanding air quality
regulations.
- Example topics include: Air pollution
Data Access and Analysis Support
Offer training and resources to help community members work with air quality data, including:
- Analyze air monitoring data (e.g., air sensors and regulatory data)
- Provide training in R or other analysis tools, providing online guides and learning resources
- Provide access to the Air Sensor Dataset, which contains 8 years of quality-controlled fine particulate matter (PM2.5) data from 2018 to the end of 2025 for
almost 5,500 outdoor PurpleAir (PA) sensors across the nine counties covered by the Air District
Materials and Resources on Air Quality Topics
The Bay Air Center website hosts and maintains resources developed for community groups, along with recommended tools, materials, and other resources by state and federal agencies to support air quality education and monitoring.
Grant Application Assistance
Support community groups with their applications for non-Air District funded grants by:
- Help frame project ideas
- Identify potential options for air monitoring equipment and software
- Support budget planning for equipment, staffing, and other costs
- Write or review technical sections of grant applications
Air Monitoring Project Support
Help communities and organizations implement air monitoring projects. Our team can assist with:
- Design local-scale air monitoring projects
- Train staff and volunteers to install and use monitors and interpret data
- Conduct and support data analysis and visualization
- Provide ongoing troubleshooting and technical support
How We Work
The Bay Air Center strives to support the needs of community projects with flexible approaches to meeting community needs and project objectives. We begin with an initial conversation to identify what would be most helpful, and then match with available resources. For some efforts, having one conversation with a Bay Air Center staffer is needed; for others, a longer-term partnership involving several types of support is required.
Bay Air Center staff works closely with the community to identify support needs and determine how to most effectively allocate resources across the requests we receive from CARB and EPA grantees.