Mapping4Change @ #LCCS2
2nd London Citizen Cyberscience Summit
In a Summit that gathered leading specialists of citizen science, the Chief Executive of Mapping for Change, Louise Francis, gave a talk about Community air pollution monitoring in London. She explained how this research project, carried out at University College London (UCL) and part of EVERYAWARE, has involved citizen scientists across London in monitoring nitrogen dioxide levels to assess local air quality. Local residents were responsible for gathering the information whilst Mapping for Change and UCL were responsible for the analysis that was finally compiled into several maps. These have now been incorporated into the Air Quality Community Map, to enable other communities to collect and visualise their data.During the event, Mapping for Change also engaged with participants
to download the newly launched Widenoise phone app, and were asked to take noise readings throughout of the three days summit. Widenoise forms one of the sensors being developed that will enable communities to collect and visualise a range of environmental data.
Mapping for Change is also a collaborator of UCL’s newly launched interdisciplinary Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) research group, whose aim is to develop ‘extreme’ citizen science tools and methodologies to be used by any community, regardless of their scientific knowledge or level of literacy. The idea is that the tools that will be used to collect and understand data can be shared using Mapping for Change expertise and platforms. The result is expected to help local communities by empowering local groups and support actions connected to environmental change or any other issues that those communities might be facing.
Several science related magazines and journals covered the event and mentioned Mapping for Change. Among them, the International weekly journal of science, Nature and the China Dialogue.
Did you miss the Summit? Find out more about some of the talks here.
There are also summaries at: gridtalk; Storify; Cybersciencesummit
I’m part of Western Docks Consultation Forum, a local group in Southampton set up to raise awareness of significant air quality issues within the city, much of which is caused by port related activities. I am interested in extreme scientist science as we are very much in the non expert category. Monitoring here is patchy and I’d like to find out more on how we could carry out similar programmes to the one done by Putney.
Hope you help us in this,
Colin