Data Science for Environmental Justice PBL Module: Air Pollution Data

This is a PBL module on Air Pollution to be used in an introductory environmental science course to motivate students to analyze related environmental justice issues.US EPA data on "State EJScreen Data at the Block Group Level" (EJSCREEN_2023_BG_StatePct_with_AS_CNMI_GU_VI.csv) was downloaded from https://www.epa.gov/ejscreen/download-ejscreen-data on December 20, 2023. (Note: Access to the EJSCREEN tool was removed during February 2005).This data was processed/cleaned using the included R script - major changes (see the R script for full changes):The dataset was subset for the state of North Carolina and region (piedmont/mountains/coastal plain) column was added.Only a subset of the variables were retained.Any row with missing information was removed.Columns with percent values were converted from decimals to percentages.An additional, summarized dataset, summarized by county, is provided: we report the sum for ACSTOTPOP, AREALAND, and AREAWATER, and the mean for the other variablesThe data provenance and data dictionary is included.Lecture Slides, Activity Sheets and Instructor Notes: https://sites.google.com/view/ds4ejThe following files are included:<b>Data Provenance and Data Dictionary: </b>Data Provenance and Data Dictionary.pdf<b>R Script for Data Processing:</b> EJSCREEN_Data_Curation_NC_Summarized_by_County.R<b>Processed Dataset for North Carolina:</b> EJScreen_State_BGLevel_NC_13Columns.csv<b>Summarized Dataset for North Carolina (summarized by county): </b>EJScreen_State_BGLevel_NC_Summarized_By_County_13Columns.csv<b>Data Dictionary: </b>Data_Dictionary_EJSCREEN_2023_BG_Columns.pdf<b>Original Dataset from EPA/EJSCREEN from which Data was Extracted for North Carolina: </b>DS4EJ_EJSCREEN_2023_BG_StatePct_with_AS_CNMI_GU_VI.csv<br>