A citizen science approach for enhancing public understanding of air pollution
| Autor: | Sachit Mahajan, Prashant Kumar, Guillem Camprodon, Antonella Passani, Viktor Smari, Giuseppe Forino, Katinka Schaaf, Agnesse Riccetti, Janaina Antonino Pinto |
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| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
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Geography Planning and Development 0211 other engineering and technologies Transportation 02 engineering and technology 010501 environmental sciences 01 natural sciences 11. Sustainability Co-creation Citizen science Quality (business) 021108 energy Air quality index 0105 earth and related environmental sciences Civil and Structural Engineering media_common Community engagement Renewable Energy Sustainability and the Environment business.industry Job design Public relations 13. Climate action ComputerSystemsOrganization_MISCELLANEOUS Business Inclusion (education) Co-creation Low-cost sensors Citizen science Interactive quiz Behavioural interventions Storytelling |
| Zdroj: | Sustainable Cities and Society |
| ISSN: | 2210-6707 |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.scs.2019.101800 |
| Popis: | The deterioration in air quality is a challenging problem worldwide. There is a need to raise awareness among the people and support informed decision making. Over the years, citizen science activities have been implemented for environmental monitoring and raising awareness but most of such works are contributory in nature, i.e. task design, planning and analysis are performed by professional researchers and citizens act as participants. Our objective is to demonstrate that citizen science can be used as a ‘tool’ to enhance public understanding of air pollution by engaging communities and local stakeholders. We present a co-creation based citizen science approach which incorporates the ideas of inclusion, where citizens are involved in most of the steps of the scientific process; collaboration, where the citizen scientists define research problems and methodologies, and reciprocation, where citizen scientists share their observations through storytelling. We integrate the use of interactive air quality quizzes, offline questionnaires and low-cost air quality monitoring sensors. The results show that such methods can generate insightful data which can assist in understanding people’s perception and exposure levels at a fine-grained level. It was also observed that community engagement in air quality monitoring can enhance partnerships between the community and research fraternity. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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