Suchergebnisse

The rise of advanced ICT technologies has made it possible to apply low-cost sensor systems for measuring air quality in citizen science projects, including education. High school students in Norway used these sensor systems in a citizen science project to design, carry out, and evaluate their own research projects on air quality. An impact assessment framework was designed to assess the impact of these activities, considering five areas of impact: scientific, social, economic, political, and environmental. In addition, the framework also considers the transformative potential of the citizen science pilot, i.e., the degree to which the pilot can help to change, alter, or replace current systems, and the business-as-usual in one or more fields such as knowledge production or environmental protection. Data for this assessment were gathered in the form of questionnaires that the students had to complete before starting and after finalizing the pilot activities. The results showed positive impacts on learning, a pro-environmental world view, and an increase in pro-science attitudes and interest in scientific and environmental-related topics at the end of the pilot activities. Only weak impacts were measured for behavioral change. The activities showed transformative potential, which makes the student activities an example of good practice for citizen science activities on air quality with low-cost sensors. ; publishedVersion

Investigating perceived air quality (AQ) in urban areas is a rather new topic of interest. Papers presenting results from studies on perception of AQ have thus far focused on the individual characteristics leading to a certain AQ perception or have compared personal perception with on-site measurements. Here we present a novel approach, namely applying volunteered geographic information (VGI) technologies in urban AQ monitoring. We present two smartphone applications that have been developed and applied in two EU projects (FP7 CITI-SENSE and H2020 hackAIR) to obtain citizens' perception of AQ. We focus on observations reported through the smartphone apps for the greater Oslo area in Norway. In order to evaluate whether the reports on perceived AQ contain information about the actual spatial patterns of AQ, we carried out a comparison of the perception data against the output from the high-resolution urban AQ model EPISODE. The results indicate an association between modelled annual average pollutant concentrations and the provided perception reports. This demonstrates that the spatial patterns of perceived AQ are not entirely random but follow to some extent what would be expected due to proximity of emission sources and transport. This information shows that VGI about citizens' perception of AQ has the potential to identify areas with low environmental quality for urban development.

The emergence of low-cost, user-friendly and very compact air pollution platforms enable observations at high spatial resolution in near-real-time and provide new opportunities to simultaneously enhance existing monitoring systems, as well as engage citizens in active environmental monitoring. This provides a whole new set of capabilities in the assessment of human exposure to air pollution. However, the data generated by these platforms are often of questionable quality. We have conducted an exhaustive evaluation of 24 identical units of a commercial low-cost sensor platform against CEN (European Standardization Organization) reference analyzers, evaluating their measurement capability over time and a range of environmental conditions. Our results show that their performance varies spatially and temporally, as it depends on the atmospheric composition and the meteorological conditions. Our results show that the performance varies from unit to unit, which makes it necessary to examine the data quality of each node before its use. In general, guidance is lacking on how to test such sensor nodes and ensure adequate performance prior to marketing these platforms. We have implemented and tested diverse metrics in order to assess if the sensor can be employed for applications that require high accuracy (i.e., to meet the Data Quality Objectives defined in air quality legislation, epidemiological studies) or lower accuracy (i.e., to represent the pollution level on a coarse scale, for purposes such as awareness raising). Data quality is a pertinent concern, especially in citizen science applications, where citizens are collecting and interpreting the data. In general, while low-cost platforms present low accuracy for regulatory or health purposes they can provide relative and aggregated information about the observed air quality. ; publishedVersion

Globalization, competitiveness, and innovation are frequently employed themes as governments, business and industry and universities attempt to respond to the challenges facing them. Clearly business as usual is not likely to be successful in the future. One strategic response for universities has been a significant impetus – in many parts of the world – towards dual, joint or concurrent degree programs involving international partners. It is perhaps not surprising that engineering is among the disciplines that make most use of international collaboration but it seems that engineering technology programs do not yet participate as extensively in this aspect of international education. Furthermore, it seems that much of the movement towards such collaborative degrees is occurring at the Master's level.

Black carbon (BC) has been simulated for south-west Spain with the air quality model CAMx driven by the MM5 meteorological model, with a spatial resolution of 2 km × 2 km and a temporal resolution of 1 h. The simulation results were evaluated against hourly equivalent black carbon (EBC) concentrations obtained in the cities of Seville and Huelva for a winter period (January 2013) and a summer period (June 2013). A large seasonal variability was observed in PM2.5 EBC concentration in the two cities, with higher concentrations in wintertime; summertime EBC concentrations were typically less than half those of the wintertime. The model captured the large diurnal, seasonal and day to day variability in these urban areas, mean biases ranged between −0.14 and 0.07 μg m−3 in winter and between 0.01 and 0.29 μg m−3 in summer while hourly PM2.5 EBC observations ranged between 0.03 μg m−3 to 10.9 μg m−3. The diurnal variation in EBC concentrations was bimodal, with a morning and evening peak. However, the EBC evening peak was much smaller in summer than in winter. The modelling analysis demonstrates that the seasonal and day to day variability in EBC concentration in these urban areas is primarily driven by the variation in meteorological conditions. An evaluation of the role of regional versus local contributions to EBC concentrations indicates that in the medium size city of Seville, local on-road sources are dominant, whereas in the small size city of Huelva, local as well as regional sources produce a similar contribution. Considering the large diesel share of the vehicle fleet in Spain (currently ∼ 56%), we conclude that continued reduction of BC from diesel on-road sources in these urban areas is indeed a priority, and we suggest that targeted mitigation strategies, for example reducing the heaviest emitters in wintertime, would yield the greatest benefits. ; The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the Department of Innovation, Science and Enterprise of the Government of Andalusia through the research projects SIMAND (P07-RNM-02729) and (2011RNM-7800) and from the Department of Environment, Andalusian Regional Government (project: 199/2011/C/00). In addition, we thank the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for funding through the project POLLINDUST (CGL2011-26259). We would also like to thank the Government of Andalusia for providing data from their Air Quality Network and from their Atmospheric Emissions Inventory and AEMET for providing meteorological data. We also thank Dr. Fantine Ngan for providing the GEOS-Chem data.