Air pollution is estimated to cause over 4,000 premature deaths in London every year. The severe reality of air pollution is generally much worse than most of us are aware. Citizen Science initiatives are one ways to take action in your local area.
Science in the City is a project that is being carried out with residents in the Barbican and Mansell Street, in the City of London. Residents are using low-tech tools to measure Nitrogen Dioxide and particulates.
Our Role
Commissioned by the City of London, Mapping for Change are providing support and training to enable communities to measure and map air quality. We are also responsible for data analysis and visualisation.
By collecting this data locally, communities have been able to raise awareness and develop strategies and solutions for mediating the negative impact of air pollution.
Community groups made the decision to digitise the data on our Community Maps platform. You can see the findings here.
Dust Storm Mapping – April 2014
A dust cloud caused massive spikes in air pollution during April 2014. Use of hand-held particulate monitors captured the results.
Documentary: Barbican Air Quality Monitoring: A Beacon of Hope for Citizen Science
When this project was advertised around the estate, I thought, ‘that’s something I can get involved with that doesn’t take up a lot of my time’. It’s one of those things where, if you get lots of people doing a little bit, it adds up to something that’s big, and important.” Maggie Urry – Barbican Resident
See the documentary
Read the final report
Related Projects
D-NOSES - Tackling Odour Pollution Across Europe
D-NOSES is a three-year EU funded research project which aims to provide a solution to the largely neglected issue of odour pollution, changing the traditional top-down approach for a bottom-up one. The lack of regulation from authorities around odour pollution is mainly due to it being difficult to reliably measure and the potential solutions being costly to implement.
Southwark New Homes
In early 2015, Southwark Council commissioned Mapping for Change to build an online Community Map to aid and support the work of the Council, in its pledge to build 11,000 new homes over the next thirty years.
MyAccessible.EU
MyAccessible.EU is a three year research project funded by the European Commission. It aims to make cities’ built environment more accessible for disabled and older people by challenging social attitudes, raising awareness and delivering assistive mobile applications. These mobile applications will provide tools for collectively gathering and sharing information about accessibility of public spaces.