Detect
Make airborne hazards visible through low-cost open tools for outdoor and indoor air, including particulate pollution, smoke, dust, CO2, ventilation indicators, and other environmental signals.
What We Do
What We Do
The Open Air Foundation builds practical public infrastructure for airborne environmental health, helping under-monitored communities detect, understand, and protect themselves through low-cost open tools, trusted data, small grants, and implementation support.
The Community Protection Journey
Detect, understand, protect.
Airborne risks become actionable when communities can see them clearly, understand what the evidence means, and use that evidence to reduce exposure. OAF's work is organized around this journey from invisible risk to practical protection.
Understand
Turn measurements into trusted local evidence through open data systems, dashboards, interpretation guidance, communication support, training, and responsible data governance.
Protect
Help communities reduce exposure through practical approaches for cleaner indoor air, filtration, ventilation, clean-air rooms, building protection, advocacy, and emergency-ready deployment.
Operating Model
Four infrastructure capabilities make that journey possible.
Detect, understand, protect is the community journey. Behind it are four connected capabilities that OAF builds and stewards so local partners can implement practical airborne environmental health solutions in real-world settings.
Community air quality monitoring
We support planning, deployment, and maintenance of open air quality monitors where public data is missing. This keeps the foundation grounded in practical community deployment and gives local partners a trusted evidence base for action.
Open source and open data
We build and steward open environmental health data systems, software, hardware, firmware, documentation, and governance practices so communities, researchers, and institutions can use transparent, auditable, reusable public-interest tools.
Local capacity building
We help partners interpret data, communicate risks, run awareness activities, maintain deployments, and use evidence for health protection, advocacy, education, and public action. The goal is local ownership, not one-off equipment delivery.
Biosafety and airborne hazards
We extend the same infrastructure toward indoor air, ventilation, environmental monitoring, and preparedness for airborne biological hazards. Air quality capacity can strengthen healthier buildings and readiness for future airborne threats.
The Missing Infrastructure Layer
Airborne risks to health are everywhere. Practical protection is not.
Every person breathes roughly 10,000 liters of air each day, but the ability to detect and reduce airborne risks to health is unevenly distributed. Air pollution, indoor air quality, ventilation, wildfire smoke, industrial emissions, dust, mold risk, environmental monitoring, and airborne biosafety are often treated as separate fields. Communities experience them through the same shared reality: the air they breathe at home, school, work, and in public spaces. The missing layer is practical public infrastructure: low-cost tools, trusted local data, open guidance, small grants, trained local partners, and protection methods that can be deployed where formal systems are absent or too slow.
Equity and Focus
OAF focuses where airborne risks are high and practical infrastructure is limited.
OAF focuses on under-monitored communities, especially in the Global South, because these are often the places where airborne risks are highest and practical protection infrastructure is most limited.
More than 90% of air-pollution-related deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, yet many of these places have little or no publicly accessible local air quality data. The same communities often face overlapping risks from smoke, dust, poor ventilation, industrial pollution, and climate-driven emergencies.
The same infrastructure gap also matters when biological hazards emerge. During pandemics, outbreaks, or other airborne threat events, communities need practical environmental monitoring, ventilation assessment, and clear local guidance before formal systems can reach every school, clinic, workplace, or public space.
Public, hyperlocal monitoring changes the starting point. It gives communities, schools, health advocates, and decision-makers a shared evidence base for protection and action.
Theory of Change
How practical infrastructure becomes community protection.
When communities have access to low-cost open tools, trusted data, practical protection methods, and small grants to deploy them, they can move from invisible airborne risks to local action.
When their experience feeds back into shared infrastructure, every project makes future projects easier, cheaper, and faster to scale.
Low-cost open tools
Affordable, auditable technology makes airborne risks visible without waiting for expensive formal systems. This includes open monitor designs, firmware, calibration and testing methods, deployment kits, and simple installation guidance for outdoor and indoor use.
Small grants and local partners
Small grants, training, and technical support help local teams turn tools into real deployments by covering shipping, installation materials, local coordination, maintenance time, workshop costs, and early protection pilots.
Community deployment
Projects are installed and maintained in places where people live, learn, work, and gather, including outdoor pollution hotspots, classrooms, clinics, homes, public spaces, and emergency-response locations.
Trusted local evidence
Open data, quality checks, dashboards, interpretation support, and responsible governance turn raw readings into evidence communities, researchers, schools, and decision-makers can use.
Practical protection measures
Evidence supports cleaner indoor air, filtration, ventilation improvements, clean-air rooms, school and clinic protection, smoke and dust response, public communication, advocacy, and emergency-ready deployment.
Feedback into shared infrastructure
Each deployment shows what works, what fails in real conditions, what guidance is unclear, what tools are missing, and what should improve in the shared hardware, software, data, and training infrastructure.
Faster replication elsewhere
Shared tools, toolkits, data models, training materials, and partner lessons make future projects easier, cheaper, and faster to adapt in other under-monitored communities.
Open Source and Open Data
Open source and open data infrastructure
OAF is a builder and steward of practical public infrastructure. Where useful infrastructure exists, OAF maintains and improves it. Where important pieces are missing or disconnected, OAF builds them.
One priority is a curated open environmental monitoring repository for both outdoor and indoor data, including air pollution, ventilation, thermal comfort, mold risk, human exposure, and protection interventions. This can accelerate research and make environmental evidence more accessible for public benefit.
Open source and open data do not mean careless sharing. Indoor and institutional projects need responsible governance, privacy-aware design, transparent tools, and clear public-interest purpose.
Where strong open data initiatives, research platforms, or community data stewards already exist, OAF will collaborate with them rather than duplicate their work. The goal is to connect missing pieces and strengthen shared infrastructure.
Shared Airborne Risk Infrastructure
The same tools can support healthier buildings and future preparedness.
The same tools that help communities understand everyday air pollution can also support healthier buildings, ventilation assessment, environmental monitoring, and preparedness for future airborne threats.
OAF treats biosafety as part of a broader airborne environmental health infrastructure. Indoor air, ventilation, humidity, thermal comfort, mold risk, smoke, dust, and airborne pathogens all shape health in homes, schools, clinics, workplaces, and public spaces.
Using the same open tools and data systems creates large cross-benefits: outdoor monitoring strengthens indoor assessment, building data improves exposure research, ventilation knowledge supports biosafety, and emergency deployments improve everyday preparedness.
This avoids a siloed air pollution plus biosafety model. It makes OAF a bridge across the whole airborne environmental health field.
From Measurement to Protection
Measurement is the beginning. Protection is the goal.
OAF's work does not stop at monitoring. Trusted local evidence should help communities reduce exposure through practical, affordable approaches: cleaner indoor air, filtration, ventilation improvement, clean-air rooms, school and clinic protection, smoke-event response, building protection, and public advocacy.
The same tools should be useful in everyday conditions and simple enough to deploy quickly when airborne hazards become urgent, including wildfire smoke events, industrial pollution incidents, dust episodes, infectious disease outbreaks, school ventilation crises, and post-disaster air quality risks.
Support Beyond Equipment
Small grants turn infrastructure into implementation.
Through small grants, training, technical support, and access to open monitoring tools, OAF helps local partners deploy practical airborne environmental health solutions in real-world community settings.
These projects are focused on implementation: generating trusted local evidence, piloting protection measures, building local capacity, and providing feedback that improves the shared infrastructure for others.
Technical assistance
We support planning, setup, troubleshooting, maintenance, and the practical skills needed to keep deployments useful over time.
Communication and advocacy capacity
We help partners interpret data, communicate risks, run awareness activities, and use evidence in education, advocacy, and public action.
Data governance
We support responsible public-interest data practices, especially when projects involve indoor spaces, institutions, or research partnerships.
Local ownership
We design support around local partners who can maintain networks, involve communities, and keep knowledge circulating after deployment.
Public-Interest Base
A proven open infrastructure base to build from.
OAF builds on the open-source infrastructure developed by AirGradient, including open hardware designs, software, firmware, and the Open Source Air Quality Monitoring Toolkit developed with the UNDP Global Centre.
AirGradient's open-source monitors are already used by 50,000+ people in 90 countries. AirGradient has committed 5,000 air quality monitors and USD 100,000 to help launch OAF, giving the foundation a practical base for community deployment.
OAF's role is to build and steward this public-interest infrastructure over the long term: maintaining what works, improving what is missing, supporting local implementation, and making the tools more useful for under-monitored communities.
Funding Pathways
Funding practical airborne environmental health infrastructure.
Community deployment funding can support small grants, shipping, installation, maintenance, partner training, public communication, local advocacy, and protection pilots.
Open infrastructure funding can support open hardware, software, firmware, environmental monitoring data systems, curated repositories, documentation, testing, governance, toolkits, capacity building, and long-term stewardship.
Airborne environmental health and preparedness funding can support environmental monitoring pilots, ventilation assessment, building protection, clean-air rooms, filtration, and emergency-ready deployment kits for homes, schools, clinics, workplaces, and public spaces.
Support OAF
By funding OAF, philanthropy can help build the missing public infrastructure layer between airborne environmental health science and practical community protection. OAF exists to make airborne environmental health solutions practical, affordable, and available where they are needed most.
info@openair.foundationWhere We Fit
We connect open technology, research, and local action.
We are not replacing national policy programs, research funders, public health agencies, or local NGOs. We sit between these systems, helping open technology and airborne environmental health data become useful in real places.
Our role is to combine monitoring access, open source and open data, small grants, research partnerships, communication support, and practical protection methods.
When useful tools or solutions do not yet exist, OAF will develop them itself or with partners, then keep them open, documented, and reusable for others.
This lets local organizations create evidence, understand it, communicate it, and use it in education, advocacy, research, policy conversations, and direct exposure reduction.