Participatory Patterns in an International Air Quality Monitoring Initiative

The issue of sustainability is at the top of the political and societal agenda, being considered of extreme importance and urgency. Human individual action impacts the environment both locally (e.g., local air/water quality, noise disturbance) and globally (e.g., climate change, resource use). Urban...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2015-03
Main Authors: Sîrbu, Alina, Becker, Martin, Caminiti, Saverio, De Baets, Bernard, Elen, Bart, Francis, Louise, Gravino, Pietro, Hotho, Andreas, Ingarra, Stefano, Loreto, Vittorio, Molino, Andrea, Mueller, Juergen, Peters, Jan, Ricchiuti, Ferdinando, Saracino, Fabio, Servedio, Vito D P, Stumme, Gerd, Theunis, Jan, Tria, Francesca, Joris Van den Bossche
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air monitoring
Air pollution
Air quality
Environmental impact
Environmental monitoring
Outdoor air quality
Pollution monitoring
Public participation
Sensors
Urban environments
Water pollution
Water quality
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The issue of sustainability is at the top of the political and societal agenda, being considered of extreme importance and urgency. Human individual action impacts the environment both locally (e.g., local air/water quality, noise disturbance) and globally (e.g., climate change, resource use). Urban environments represent a crucial example, with an increasing realization that the most effective way of producing a change is involving the citizens themselves in monitoring campaigns (a citizen science bottom-up approach). This is possible by developing novel technologies and IT infrastructures enabling large citizen participation. Here, in the wider framework of one of the first such projects, we show results from an international competition where citizens were involved in mobile air pollution monitoring using low cost sensing devices, combined with a web-based game to monitor perceived levels of pollution. Measures of shift in perceptions over the course of the campaign are provided, together with insights into participatory patterns emerging from this study. Interesting effects related to inertia and to direct involvement in measurement activities rather than indirect information exposure are also highlighted, indicating that direct involvement can enhance learning and environmental awareness. In the future, this could result in better adoption of policies towards decreasing pollution.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1503.07730