COMPAIR project
You tackle the following challenges:
COMPAIR: what and why?
Although air quality in Europe has already improved, in some places the European standards and/or WHO standards are still exceeded. That is why COMPAIR wants to ensure, together with citizens, an improvement of local air quality. We do this by focusing on behavioral change and awareness of the prevailing air problems.
In the project we actively involve citizens. Together with them we measure air quality (PM and NO 2 ) and do traffic counts (Telraam sensors). This form of citizen science consists of dynamic and static measurements.
› Dynamic measurements
Participants can go out with an air quality sensor on their bike/backpack/buggy/etc. so that they can measure their personal exposure to air pollution during their journeys (dynamic exposure). Their measurements will also be visible in real-time on the dashboard that we are developing within the COMPAIR project. In this way, participants get insight into how good or bad the air quality is on their route. This data can also enable researchers to better map the air quality of local points. For example, together with the students in the Krekel in Ghent we have done measurements with mobile SODAQ sensors. More information about this can be found on this website .
› Static measurements
Because traffic counts are expensive and scarce, further research is necessary. Citizens can help by using the Telraam sensor , a sensor that they can hang on a window and that collects traffic data.
Project objective
VMM is investigating various sensors to measure personal exposure (including NO 2 and PM). These sensors are compared with each other, after which the most suitable one is chosen for the experiment. The pilot experiments are being carried out in Flanders, Athens, Berlin and Sofia.
The project has developed a toolset to measure exposure to air pollution:
- Dynamic Visualization app (DEVA app), allows you to explore the air quality and traffic congestion in your area in different ways.
- Dynamic Visualisation Exposure dashboard (DEV-D) , this dashboard displays the journeys recorded via the DEVA app in combination with air quality data measured with mobile sensors or calculated via a model
- Policy Monitoring Dashboard (PMD) , which allows you to visualize the impact of a local intervention based on locally performed measurements of air quality and traffic
