What with so much conflicting information from government officials following last year’s nuclear disaster in Fukushima, many Japanese turned to an open source map created by Safecast to track local radiation levels in real time.

Safecast’s maps proved to be such a hit that now, the organization led by Sean Bonner has been commission by the Knight Foundation to develop a similar map for Los Angeles, only this time it won’t be mapping radiation levels, but rather the city’s air quality.

Safecast got the nod in the latest round of the Knight News Challenge, which focused on big data-related projects. Having only just awarded $1.37 million to six network-related projects in June, the Knight Foundation upped its award amount this time to $2.2 million, split equally between six data-focused projects, of which Safecast was one of them.

And deservedly so, for its efforts in post-quake Japan proved to be invaluable for thousands of people time when they needed all the help they could get. Safecast’s team – virtually all of them volunteers, established a grassroots network in affected parts of the country, encouraging those citizens with access to Geiger counters to share the radiation data they recorded in their area, which was then used to create a map depicting the level of danger around Fukushima.

Click map to view

Safecast even went further, collaborating with Andrew “Bunnie” Huang of Chumby fame to develop open source software that was later used by a local manufacturer to produce low-cost Geiger counters that the public could easily afford.

Now, according to GigaOM, Safecast will use the $600,000 it was awarded by the Knight Foundation to come up with a similar device that can measure air quality. The organization hopes that enough  residents in Los Angeles will volunteer to send it data, so that it can come up with a comprehensive picture of the city’s air quality in real time, before moving on to map other cities in the US.