Measuring Meierijstad together
You tackle the following challenges:
Short content
What: Measuring air quality
Where: Meierijstad
Registration: via www.samenmetenmeierijstad.nl/
General information
Soon after the start, the first interested residents of Meierijstad came to register via word of mouth. After an article about the working group in a regional newspaper, things gained momentum. Now after six months, Samen Meten Meierijstad has delivered 115 fine dust meters and there are still 15 interested parties on the list for a meter. The members of the working group build the sensor kits themselves and provide technical support. They use the Sensor.Community measurement method.
Meierijstad
Meierijstad is located in a rural area in Brabant. The aim is to provide the rural area with particulate matter meters as much as possible in addition to the 13 residential areas. Samen Meten Meierijstad would like to challenge everyone in the municipality to participate. The chairman of this association is Piet van Schijndel, he says: “It is so easy to identify industry, transport, agriculture and livestock as the cause of the high particulate matter content, but we contribute just as well by our consumer behavior in various forms. We hope that our initiative will contribute to raising awareness that we all have a responsibility to reduce particulate matter as much as possible.”
The role of Measuring Together RIVM
Contrary to what the name suggests, there is no direct involvement between RIVM's Samen Meten and Samen Meten Meierijstad. But that is precisely what makes Meten Meierijstad interesting, explains Hester Volten of Samen Meten RIVM: ”When we started supporting citizen science projects a few years ago, we received many critical questions: RIVM is a national institute. You can't sit down in every municipality to give advice, can you? We said: no, we only do that in the beginning. We will try to answer what we come across on Samenmeten.nl, so that everyone can use it. Measuring Together Meierijstad is a wonderful example of how it really works! In December I saw a video on YouTube , a first informative call, which led to the establishment of Samen Meten Meierijstad. Citizen science in action! They used information from Samenmeten.nl, but there was also someone at the table with specialist knowledge of air measurements to explain what particulate matter is. That made me very happy.”
More information
Samen Meten Meierijstad is an association with 7 members, of which 3 persons form the daily board. With this group they build the particulate matter meters themselves, after which they are distributed to interested parties. The municipality of Meierijstad has given a start-up subsidy for this project. For more information or to register, go to www.samenmetenmeierijstad.nl/.
