Environmental Equity Laboratory (LAEQ)

Université du Québec - Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), Montréal, Québec
What the facility does

Urbanism, regional planning and environmental studies.

Areas of expertise

The work of this laboratory at the Urbanisation Culture Société Research Centre is part of a research trend in environmental justice that focuses on situations of overexposure to pollution (air and noise) or reduced accessibility to positive elements of the urban environment (vegetation, parks and urban resources) by specific groups of the population (defined, for example, by income, age or ethnicity). More generally, the laboratory research program contributes to broader debates about socio-spatial justice in geography and urban studies. It aims to enrich discussions on the definition of the equitable city across the notions of distributional justice, recognitional justice and procedural justice.

Research services
  • Multidimensional diagnosis for air pollution, noise, distribution of community facilities, etc.
  • Urban noise modelling
  • Analysis of exposure to air and noise pollution
  • Development and building of urban indicators
  • Analysis of the distribution of urban vegetation
  • Analysis and socioeconomic portrait
  • Design and development of web atlas
Sectors of application
  • Policy and governance
  • Transportation

Equipment 

Function

Aeroqual (Series 500) personal portable air quality devices with an NO2 sensor and a  temperature and humidity sensor (10)

Portable device used to measure NO2, an air pollutant, every minute

Brüel & Kjær (type 448) personal noise dose meters (10)

Portable device used to measure noise in decibels every minute

GPS Garmin Forerunner 920 XT multisport watches (10)

Captures path travelled using GPS with different settings such as heart rate. Watch designed for cycling

Garmin VIRB XE action cameras (3)

Takes video of path travelled with GPS tracking

Server and 16 work stations

The laboratory has a computer server, spatial data and 16 high-performance computers equipped with the necessary software for data analysis

ESRI ArcGIS and its extensions

GIS software

ENVI + IDL, ENVI Feature Extraction, ENVI LiDAR

Specialized software for processing satellite images

Trimble eCognition Developer

Specialized software for processing object-based images

Brüel & Kjær LIMA Predictor

Specialized software for modelling noise