The Global Environmental Measurement and Monitoring (GEMM) Initiative, an international project of Optica (formerly OSA) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU), is inviting city leaders, policymakers, scientists and the business community to discover how cost-effective technologies for monitoring greenhouse gas (GHG) and air pollution emissions in urban environments can measure and predict the impact of climate policy and planning decisions.
Recent deployments of low-cost, high-density GHG sensors in several cities have yielded initial datasets demonstrating the utility of mapping GHG and air pollution levels in real time. Analyses of the COVID-19 emission reductions show that determining the emission contributions from various source sectors with detailed mapping and timing across the full diurnal cycle is possible and can provide invaluable information on governmental policies affecting GHG emission levels.