Problem: Residents of Portland and South Portland, Maine, have been reporting disruptive smells in the air on certain days of the year. The cities use different platforms to report and respond to the problem: a local 311 app, and a popular crowdsourcing app used across the nation. It's been unclear what the source of the smells might be and difficult to understand the extent of the issue on both sides of the Fore River.

• Coordinate the various data sources
• Clean the data and make it easily accessible for the general public
• Create some simple visualizations
• Add additional data from ME DEP (e.g., wind speed, direction, temperature, etc)

• The Greater Portland Council of Governments (GPCOG)
• The Sierra Club
• Roux Institute

• Excel spreadsheet -- for City of Portland, Maine
  • SeeClickFix app for Portland residents
  • residents add odor reports with the app
  • these reports are collected by the city and sent (to us) monthly in an excel file
• https://smellmycity.org/data
  • This site has directions for accessing South Portland odor complaints
  • Enter ZIP codes of interest (South Portland have several ZIP codes)
  • This produces a spreadsheet for download
• https://rainwise.net/weather/SMRO3
  • This site has DEP weather reports.
  • The top drop-down menu has reports of interest to the project.
  • There are many stations, only a portion of them are online
  • SMRO 3-7 (the units that are online) -- note the location at the bottom of the page.
  • These were installed sometime in 2020 (that's when ME DEP started monitoring South Portland in particular)
  • To download spreadsheets, hit the button at the top of the bar that is a downward arrow.
• Oil terminals -- all of this data is in paper form
  • When barges come into the Portland terminal to deliver or pick up oil, they have to give DEP notice
  • There are written notifications from boats to ME DEP -- these are faxed paper copies
  • We hope to be be getting this data...

• Maria Guerra (Environmental Health Fellow, Resilience Corps at GPCOG)
• Andrew Butcher (Director of Innovation & Resilience, GPCOG)
• Luke Truman (Sierra Club's Maine Chapter)
  • Luke has experience in data mapping, and working on projects with college students.
  • He has been invested in this problem of Portland/South Portland air quality for some time.