EPA's Smoke Sense: A Citizen Science Project Using a Mobile App

EPA’s Smoke Sense Project is a crowdsourcing, citizen science research initiative focused on increasing public awareness and engagement related to wildfire smoke health risks. Specifically, EPA wants to understand the extent that exposure to wildland fire smoke affects health and productivity, discover what steps people are willing to take to reduce their exposure, and develop health risk communication strategies that improve public health when there is wildfire smoke. The Smoke Sense App serves as an educational tool and resource to increase awareness and encourage people to take steps to protect their health from wildfire smoke.
Presenters shared the story of the Smoke Sense Project, from its launch in 2017 to its current status with over 45,000 participants, focusing on findings related to risk communication have informed the evolution of the project and the changes to the Smoke Sense app that are included in the upcoming 2021 release.