What areas of Metro Vancouver are the smelliest? UBC researchers want to know

Summer heat can mean summer smells around the city, and a project out of the University of British Columbia (UBC) has been tracking the worst and weirdest odours around Metro Vancouver.

It’s called “Smell Vancouver.” It’s a website and app that allows participants to report what they smelled when they smelled it, what they did when they smelled it, and how the smell made them feel. All of this data is then used to create the region’s “smellscape.”

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Lead analyst for the project, Dr. Sahil Bhandari says other cities in North America have seen similar studies done, but he takes it a step further.

“We allow people to express their emotions in terms of their odour experiences. To describe in about 100 characters what they’re feeling about the odour, about the symptoms that they experienced, the protective actions that they took in response to the odours,” he told CityNews.

“As a scientific study, we’ve actually gotten a fairly good response when compared with studies done around the world.”

Since the app launched in 2020, Bhandari says between 500 and 600 people use it yearly. With the amount of data points continuing to grow, there have been some trends carved out.

“What we see is that Vancouver, Richmond, Delta, and Burnaby account for about 90 per cent of odours for the Metro Vancouver region,” the researcher noted.

“Vancouver is sort of a mix of a lot of odour sources. Delta has predominantly rotten odours, you can imagine, associated with landfills whereas Burnaby is dominated by chemical odours because of the dominant industrial presence.”

One thing Bhandari has noticed through the study is that more people are reporting between June and August, often between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. That time frame has piqued the interest of researchers.

“Either people are only reporting when they’re at home, or — which is what we’re suspecting — these odours have chemicals that are disrupting their sleep,” he said.

The research, Bhandari explains, could be a useful bit of information that could be used by city planners and policymakers.

“Future land use planning could incorporate odour-based evaluations as well. Actively thinking about the smellscape of a region in policy, making sure people would enjoy that smellscape … and creating architecture around that idea,” he said.

The community-based approach that the project has taken, the analyst says, ensures a more diverse perspective on the region’s smellscape.

“I feel like the qualitative aspect to it makes Vancouver unique,” he said. “Incorporation of such a community science approach in policy-making would address very diverse perspectives.”

You can make your own smell report by clicking here.