Seeking ways to open a closed city
during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Problem
Narrowing a solution area.
The scale and risk of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has taken nearly every country by surprise, testing government leadership and resiliency in producing countermeasures. For months, much of the world had to shut down due to the potential risk of transmission in enclosed public spaces. This threw many economies into a tailspin that public officials are still struggling to manage.
The key area of focus for this challenge is figuring out how to make indoor air safe enough to continue operating essential services, businesses, transit, and education.
Image sourced from The Toronto Star.
Finding and Defining Opportunities
Solution + prevention.
Of all the approaches to handling the global pandemic, few have considered infrastructural measures that would also serve as preventative for future re-occurrences. Like other public health innovations of the past — CO2 and smoke detectors or emergency lighting systems — building codes must be altered to make indoor environments safe enough to continue commercial activity despite public health crises.
An integration of electrostatic treatment into HVAC systems is a highly promising solution. Such systems could kill viral particles in the air upon contact by immediately ionizing them.
Rising to Challenges
A need for alignment and new standards.
There were two significant challenges throughout the conception of this project. First, there needed to be unanimous support by all levels of government; however given the frantic circumstances and capacity of those managing the pandemic, this aligned support was missing.
The Federal Government and Health Canada would also need to work together to set a standard for maximum viral loads acceptable within the air, so that businesses could monitor, manage, and be held accountable to these standards during operation. Unfortunately there were no efforts made towards this.
Image sourced from The Toronto Star.
Results and Final Takeaways
A pause.
The project is still ongoing. However any future decisions rest on the provincial government, and federal government to set air quality standards.