Related projects
Outdoor and Indoor Exposure (OIE)
Description
In the OIE (Outdoor and Indoor Exposure) project, we investigate the discrepancy in the evaluation of personal and population exposure when using, on one hand different pollutant concentration maps with different averaging periods, obtained by more or less sophisticated and/or refined models, static or dynamic populations, etc., and on the other hand actual data recorded by the low-cost sensor based mini-stations developed for this project, the so-called Antilope. Our regions of interest are both the cities of Liège and Namur in Belgium.
Lessons learned
Project in progress.
Website
https://www.issep.be/wp-content/uploads/Projet-OIE.pdf
hackAIR - Collective awareness platform for outdoor air pollution
Description
HackAIR has developed and pilot tested an open platform that enables communities of citizens to easily set up air quality monitoring networks and engage their members in measuring and publishing outdoor air pollution levels, leveraging the power of online social networks, mobile and open hardware technologies, and engagement strategies.
The hackAIR platform enables the collection of data from:
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measurements from existing official air quality stations and open data
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user-generated sky-depicting images (publicly available geo-tagged and time-stamped images posted through social media platforms, webcams, or images captured by users)
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low-cost open hardware devices easily assembled by citizens using commercial off-the-shelf parts.
A data fusion algorithm and reasoning services synthesizes heterogeneous air quality data into air quality-aware personalized services to citizens.
The hackAIR platform has been co-created with the users, and it is offered through an open web application that communities of citizens are able to install and customize on their own, and a mobile app that citizens can use to get convenient access to easy-to-understand air quality information, contribute to measurements by an open sensor, or by taking and uploading sky-depicting photos, and receive personalized air quality-aware information on their everyday activities. The hackAIR platform has been already tested by almost 3,000 users all around Europe.
Lessons learned
Since its launch, the hackAIR platform has engaged thousands of Europeans. They are monitoring air quality in their neighbourhood in various ways: providing air quality measurements to the platform with their own self-built sensors and taking photos of the sky with the hackAIR app to estimate the air quality.
Pilot projects in Germany and Norway contributed with a series of workshops to raise awareness of air quality issues and mobilise health-conscious communities. Participating in such a sensor-building workshop created behaviour change regarding air pollution.
A workshop toolkit was designed to support workshop facilitators, providing a number of resources for all who want to organise their own hackAIR workshop.
The hackAIR tech team prototyped an innovative way to get estimations of the air quality. The hackAIR app includes a feature for taking photos of the blue sky. The analysis process provides an estimation of air quality to the user.
To make it even easier for citizens to measure air quality, hackAIR offered plug-and-play hackAIR air quality sensors – no soldering, no programming! The outcome: 100 sensors sold in 3 months! Next batch being prepared for 2019!
Together with the artist collective Pollution Explorers and Umbrellium, hackAIR was able to try out wearable technologies and new engagement approaches in its workshops.
We published a series of blog posts on data visualisation and sense-making for those who are interested in visualizing their hackAIR sensor data. hackAIR users shared exciting experiments with us: Kniwwelino, Google Data Studio, Google Sheets & other tools.
A data fusion algorithm calculates estimates for air quality for locations in which no measurements are available. This makes it possible for hackAIR to provide a continuous map of air quality information.
A Round Table on lower cost air quality sensors was organised by the Joint Research Centre & hackAIR. Governmental authorities, citizen science initiatives, environmental NGOs & academics explored how to collaborate & better leverage each other’s work. Read more here: http://bit.ly/2qxTBQv. This event showed the strong network of stakeholders and related projects that hackAIR has built during its project time.
The hackAIR platform remains available! Citizens can continue to contribute air quality measurements and access air quality information through the mobile app or web platform. Air quality data can be accessed using an open API – and the full datasets of measurements are available as open data. Source code and hardware designs are available for download under an open licenses and incorporate dozens of community suggestions and improvements.
Website
Luchtpijp
Description
Air pollution can reach high levels in Brussels and Flemish Brabant . It is like an insidious poison, often invisible to the naked eye. In order to tackle air pollution, it must be made visible, therefore it is crucial that citizens monitor air quality themselves. This is why Luchtpijp was born. We offer citizens, associations and municipalities activities and tools to raise awareness around air quality. Luchtpijp provides workshops and activities that municipalities and organizations can order to create awareness around air quality. How about joining us for a workshop where residents can build air monitors themselves? Or lectures about "Quality air", or workshops for children and walk tours over the air pollution levels in the city? Well, you can find all this at Luchtpijp.
With Luchtpijp we want to raise awareness about clean air. The activities are participative and allow people to come together and reflect on air quality. The technology we use is open source and the data that the activities provide is accessible to everyone. This way our residents become a sort of citizen scientist themselves.
Our goal: as many citizen measurement stations as possible in Brussels and Flemish Brabant!
Lessons learned
Does not apply
Website
DenCity
Description
The most fundamental ingredient for building a smart city is having access to accurate, relevant and real-time data. What is the air quality in this or that street? How much nitrogen and ozone is there in the air at that intersection? Is the concentration of fine dust the same all over this district? And what’s the average particle size? The more we measure, the more we can calculate, forecast and use the data in handy applications: an app that calculates healthy cycle routes, a tool that moves traffic in the right direction, fact-based changes that can be used when a road is being rebuilt, etc.
The Dencity project aims to show how big the impact will be on the relevant data we have available – and whether we need to add even more sensors to the city than there are today. We’re also looking to see if all of these sensors truly have to be top-quality and which cheaper instruments are available for supplying data of sufficiently high quality. This helps us prepare the building blocks for other imec City of Things projects that use large numbers of sensors.
Lessons learned
Website
https://www.imeccityofthings.be/en/projects/dencity-more-sensors-in-the-cit
Meet Mee Mechelen
Description
We want to become a meeting place with and for engaged citizens and organizations in Mechelen. We collect data and information about air quality and ambient noise. With this we want to support initiatives for a better living environment together.
Our plans:
1. Organizing civil measurement campaigns on air quality and sound.
2. Informative website with our measurement results and accessible information.
3. Support and launch local initiatives to improve air quality, reduce noise pollution and support sustainability in Mechelen.
4. Support open and constructive dialogue between all parties involved in Mechelen. We become a true community.
Lessons learned
Project in progress.
Website
Gentanair
Description
We want to increase awareness on air quality and encourage citizens to get involved in measurements , e.g. by using Luftdaten-type PM sensors. Our website also makes clear that there are many valuable air quality results available, including the measurements and detailed model maps of official environmental agencies.
Lessons learned
Does not apply.
Website
CurieuzeNeuzen Vlaanden (CN)
Description
CurieuzeNeuzen Vlaanderen is a citizen science project in which 20.000 citizens measure the air quality near their own house during May 2018. The aim is to acquire a detailed map of air quality in Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), both in cities as well as in the countryside. CurieuzeNeuzen Vlaanderen is the largest citizen science project on air quality to date.
Lessons learned
Website
https://curieuzeneuzen.be/in-english
Leuvenair
Description
Leuvenair.be is a citizen initiative that wants to map the air quality in and around Leuven. We are not intending to reinvent the wheel, but we use the knowledge of other citizen initiatives. In particular, Leuvenair.be uses the PM-sensors developed by the Luftdaten.info project. Luftdaten.info is a citizen initiative from Stuttgart that is now widespread in Germany and Europe.
Lessons learned
Does not apply.
Website
LIFE IP Malopolska
Description
Southern Poland is one of the most polluted regions in the EU. The Małopolska Region struggles with very poor air quality, particularly during the winter season. Concentrations of particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) and benzo(a)pyrene are exceedingly high throughout the whole region. The major source of air pollution in Małopolska is low-stack emission (combustion of solid fuels in obsolete household boilers). This source is responsible for 55% of PM 10 and over 70% of carcinogenic benzo(a)pyrene concentrations.
The Małopolska Air Quality Plan (MAQP) determines tasks for local governments to eliminate obsolete solid fuel boilers and modernize household heating systems for those based on environmentally friendly energy sources (like natural gas, light fuel oil, renewable energy, electric heating, district heating) or modern solid fuel boilers meeting high quality standards in terms of pollutant emissions. However, the level of implementation of these corrective actions is insufficient e.g. in 2013 – 2015 the achieved reduction of particulate matter and benzo(a)pyrene emissions reached only 8% of the target for 2023. There is also significant untapped potential for emission reduction by improving the energy efficiency of buildings.
The scope of the project includes:
• Establishing a network of 60 Eco-managers in order to support the implementation of air quality actions at the municipal level,
• Strengthening advisory and administrative services for Krakow residents with respect to elimination of stoves and solid fuel boilers,
• Operating a regional-level Excellence Centre, to provide training and knowledge base for local authorities and Eco-managers,
• Conducting information and education campaigns at the regional and local levels,
• Developing an instrument for high resolution modeling of pollution dispersion for Krakow and analysis of variants of possible actions aimed at emission reduction,
• Preparing an international air-pollutants modeling system for Małopolska, Silesia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Main objectives:
• The full implementation of the Małopolska Air Quality Plan, which will result in emission reduction to permissible levels
• The effective use of available EU and national funds aimed at improving air quality.
Lessons learned
Website
The Firework Experiment
Description
During the past three years RIVM organizes the firework experiment in collaboration with citizen scientists. During New Year's Night,a large number of Dutch citizens share their sensor measurements of particulate matter (PM) with RIVM. RIVM shows all the available data on her data portal. On average, the particulate matter concentrations depicted by citizens were increased by a factor of 17, on average. For example, in 2017 special initiatives took place in the Dutch cities Amsterdam and Amersfoort. Here, , RIVM made a number of sensor kits available for the measurements. In addition, citizen group initiatives from other cities as well as individuals supplied their measurement data. In addition, there was measurement data from Dutch participants in the Luftdaten project and other projects in which RIVM is involved.
For an example see figure below. As expected, the sensors show a peak in the PM concentration around during midnight. Many sensors ran at their maximum values of 1000 µg/m3.
Lessons learned
Website
National Smart City Living Lab
Description
The aim of the National Smart City Living Lab program is to bring Smart City development to the next level: from pilot to process. The emphasis is on collaboration, upscaling and achieving results in a short period of time. This is done by working on concrete use cases in and around cities. The focus is on the measurement of air quality and noise with low-cost sensors. A sensor box has been developed within the program that can be attached to a lamppost. RIVM contributes as a partner by calibrating sensors by using data from other sensors and official air quality data. This developing knowledge is transferred to the other partners.
Each of the participating cities has introduced a case and has set its own learning objectives with research questions. The municipalities are provided with existing digital technologies around healthy living, a theme important for every city. The program therefore offers an organizational and technical basic infrastructure so that municipalities can focus on the implementation of the ‘living lab’, collaborations within and outside the municipality and the scaling up of their experiences to other projects and processes.
In this way local authorities learn to deal with all aspects of working with cheaper sensors and questions like What does the data say? What can and can't you do with it? Are there other departments that can use the data? How do we deal with residents who can also see the data? In addition to technology, participants also receive project supervision, a Smart City training course and a Smart City Roadmap workshop.
Lessons learned
Website
USP Innovation Lab Living Environment
Description
Thanks to the rapid innovations of low-cost sensors, ICT and BigData, it is possible to measure and interpret our living environment in a different manner. To accelerate these developments, RIVM, University of Utrecht and the Utrecht Science Park Foundation have organizined the USP Innovation Lab Living Environment. Together with TNO, Air Radar and JCDecaux. The Living Lab Air stands for an innovative and high-density sensor network for measuring local air quality.
The network consists of around twenty sensors distributed across Utrecht Science Park. Information from the latest generation of sensors is collected and validated via the 4G network. LivingLabAir.nl displays the measurement data in real time. This makes it possible to gain an accurate insight into the current air quality. The information can be used to identify the cleanest routes, to show concentration peaks during peak hours and to substantiate mobility policy.
The measuring kits measure particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide. In the Living Lab Air, RIVM wants to do more research into the quality and interpretation of the measurement data (shown at the RIVM data portal https://samenmeten.rivm.nl/dataportaal/)
The USP Innovation Lab Living Environment connects scientists, students and residents at the Utrecht Science Park to test new ideas in open innovation or to explore them in small pilot projects. The results can be used in other urban or rural areas. With this, the Innovation Lab wants to be a motor for improving health in the living environment.
Lessons learned
Website
Project ZULU (Zuivere Lucht)
Description
The aim of Project ZULU is to limit the impact of pollutants on the indoor air quality. Innovative purification technologies are being optimised and tested for implementation to benefit sensitive groups. In collaboration with the inhabitants, we measure the air quality and conceive targeted local solutions.
Project ZULU seeks to reduce the impact of air pollution on the health of susceptible groups of people in the border region of Flanders and the Netherlands. Industrial research into and experimental development of the plasma catalytic air purification technology will enable this to be further optimised and made more sustainable. The impact under realistic circumstances can then be objectively monitored by testing the technology in set-ups for sensitive groups such as children (in schools and daycares).
We also produced an online tool which will facilitate families to measure the air quality at home: www.hoemeetiklucht.eu.
Lessons learned
Website