What’s the context?
Monitoring of atmospheric conditions enables to issue warnings of health-endangering concentrations of particles in the city; and to raise awareness of the risks of air pollution. Although we may associate air pollution with cities in emerging economies, in the UK traffic hot spots may cause considerable health impacts. For example, based on official statistics 40,000 death annually were attributed to poor air quality in the UK alone (124 in Newcastle). Regular commuters are more likely to encounter similar levels of air pollution over a prolonged time period, causing negative health effects. Air pollutants are especially problematic for those with heightened sensitivity and / or chronic conditions such as asthma or allergies.
What is the challenge?
Over the years, Gosforth high street has emerged as a busy traffic-congested area. Many commuters from south of the main city area pass through Gosforth in the morning and evening on the way from or to work. That’s why the local authority has demarcated Gosforth as one of the two air quality monitoring zones. Newcastle City Council, supported by Science Central, has deployed a comprehensive sensor infrastructure. Detailed sensor readings on air quality are collected from Gosforth high street and reached the city council. However, the data is not readily accessible for commuters or pedestrians, insufficiently organised and therefore under-used. In this project, it’s your task to come up with a better use of the data for Newcastle, for example, as a public installation. How would you achieve a more direct connection between commuters, pedestrians, and the air quality observed at a particular time?
What are the deliverables?
- The site for this project is the Gosforth High Street. The project could look into a device capturing sensor data, displayed over time.
- Develop a service concept / model for your deployment (for this, you could study the PosterVote deployment as good example). For example, how could you enable citizens to engage with the device?
- You could tinker with Arduino (https://www.arduino.cc) on a prototypical local installation and test this concept with users