Rome. February 2017. 500 people. 2 days. One big question: How can we embody a human perspective for the next generation internet?

Together with other projects focused on collective awareness platforms for sustainability and social innovation (CAPS), hackAIR participated in the Digital Social Innovation Fair 2017. Our theme: “Collective Sensing and Action”. Sharing a stage with representatives from STARS4ALL, CAPTOR, MAZI and WATIFY projects, Panagiota Syropoulou from DRAXIS presented the latest news from the project and discussed important challenges in engaging users and handling user-generated information.

We also showed an early prototype of the hackAIR Arduino sensor at the event and showed real-time measurements of the air quality of the venue. Visitors showed great interest to build a hackAIR sensor on their own and monitor air pollution. Potential synergies were discussed with representatives of other CAPS projects, such as CAPTOR and EMPATIA.

More about the Digital Social Innovation Fair 2017
Join us at the DSI Manifesto Workshop in Rimini in May 2017.

Report: Internet and social media for environmental monitoring

hackAIR partners organised a workshop on “Internet and social media for environmental monitoring” at the 3^rd International Conference on Internet Science in Florence, Italy on 12 September 2016. The purpose of the workshop was to present relevant works in the area of environmental monitoring based on data and content from the web and user-generated content posted in social media, as well as to discuss needs from end users and environmental experts in the context of exploiting user generated content and web resources for air quality issues.

Claudio Cavallaro (Politecnico di Milano) presented his work on “Compressing Web geodata for real-time environmental applications”. Claudio presented a two-stage approach for the compression of Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data and geographic entities for a mountain environment monitoring mobile AR application. The proposed method is generic and could be applied to other types of geographical data.

Hai-Ying Liu (Norwegian Institute for Air Research – NILU) gave an overview on her work on “Analysis of public interest in environmental health information: fine-tuning content for dissemination via social media”. The findings of this study highlight the importance of up-to-date informational content, the use of visual con-tent and the role of features for interaction and dialogue to ensure user engagement with a Facebook page on environmental health or citizen science.

Anastasia Moumtzidou (Centre for Research & Technology Hellas – Information Technologies Institute (CERTH-ITI)) presented her work “Towards air quality estimation using collected multimodal environmental data”. Her work is about the development of an open platform, which collects multimodal environmental data related to air quality from several sources including official open sources, social media and citizens.

Panagiota Syropoulou (DRAXIS) introduced her team’s work on the development of a mobile application that offers “Personalised air quality information based on open environmental data and user-generated information”. The proposed application, called ENVI4ALL, offers direct access to personalised and localised information on air quality (current, forecast, and historical), making use of diverse sources of large datasets of open air quality data, and crowdsourced information on the perception of app users about the current air quality.

Interesting points from the open discussion

• An important challenge for a solution like hackAIR emerges from the fact that most of the public authorities are reluctant to release air quality information for their area. Anyone who wants to provoke policy change towards cleaner air should convince public authorities to publish information on local air quality.
• An interesting example of using citizens as “sensors” is that of the UK government where citizens can use a specific hashtag at social media to report the level of the snow in their area. The government collects all this information to create a dynamic map of the snow level across UK.
• Regarding the hackAIR solution, some participants expressed their interest to see also air quality forecasts as this information would be valuable for the protection of their health.

hackAIR: collective awareness for air quality

European project creates tools for
citizens’ observatories on air pollution

Thessaloniki, January 2016. A consortium of six partners in five European countries has launched a project to develop an open technology toolkit for citizens’ observatories on air quality. The project hackAIR is supported through the EU programme on “Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation” until December 2018.

“Air pollution is the single environmental issue Europeans worry about the most, and many do not feel sufficiently informed about air quality issues in their country. Air pollution, and more specifically particulate matter, shortens people’s lifespan and contributes to serious illnesses such as heart disease, respiratory problems and cancer”, says Arne Fellermann, air quality campaigner for Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND).

At the same time, it remains difficult for citizens to assess where and when they are exposed to air pollution from particulate matter. Official sensors  are often few and far between, coverage is poor outside cities, and their data is not always easily accessible. The hackAIR toolkit aims to complement official data with a number of community-driven data sources, including:

• an easy-to-build open hardware sensor module that transmits regular air quality measurements via Bluetooth;
• air quality information derived from mobile phone pictures of the sky; and
• a low-tech measuring setup involving paper filters and aquarium air pumps.

“This crowd-sourced air quality data will provide citizens with improved information about air pollution levels where they live. This will be useful for people who like to exercise outside, look after children or the elderly or suffer from respiratory problems themselves. It will also allow for a conversation in the local community about possible improvements in air quality”, says Evangelos Kosmidis, managing director of DRAXIS Environmental Technologies.

The combination of both official open and community-driven data will thus contribute towards both individual and collective awareness about air quality in Europe, hereby encouraging changes in behaviour towards air quality improvements. Within the project, effective engagement strategies for monitoring air pollution and encouraging behavioural change towards air quality will be explored.

In 2016, the project partners will conduct a set of co-creation workshops with user communities and other involved stakeholders to determine needs and expectations and inform and evaluate the software design. The full platform is expected to be available for selected cities in 2017.

The consortium consists of Draxis Environmental S.A., the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Friends of the Earth Germany, ON:SUBJECT and the SMIT Center for Studies on Media, Information and Telecommunication at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. The Democritus University of Thrace and the Technological Educational Institute of Athens contribute as third parties affiliated to Draxis Environmental S.A.

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For further information and to get involved, sign up for updates at www.hackair.eu or follow us on Twitter @hack_AIR.

Project coordinator: Dr. Machi Simeonidou, msimeonidou@draxis.gr

Media contact: Wiebke Herding, wiebke@onsubject.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 688363.