Air quality citizen awareness: An explorative study on what to measure, where to measure and how to present it?

Air quality in general is a hot topic that is significantly linked to respiratory diseases that have been causing a decrease in life expectancy around the globe. Over the past three decades, European cities have done air quality monitoring using one or two air quality instruments per 249 thousand inhabitants. The instruments are big, rigid and expensive. This thesis focuses on new ways of air quality monitoring using air quality sensors that are small, cheap and flexible. An investigatory approach was used through taking insights from citizens to get an understanding of what air pollutants to measure, where to measure and how to present the information in ways that are clear and easy to understand. From a survey of 82 participants, results showed that 74% of the people are concerned about air quality and they would like to receive information in ways that are easy to understand like colours (red for bad or green for good), numbers (µg/m3) and graphs. The citizens identified carbon dioxide (40.6%), particulate matter (25%), nitrogen oxide (18.8%) and ozone (9.4%) as pollutants that need critical attention which can be measured in places that they spend a lot of time in for example playgrounds and parks as well as near sources of pollution like busy roads and industries. The survey was followed by an analysis of eight sensors that were put in the urban environment measuring PM1, PM2.5 and PM10 together with environmental factors (temperature and humidity) to find how the information can be used for citizen air quality awareness and if was accurate enough. The sensors could accuracy detect particulate matter variations from all the places. All environmental factors (temperature, humidity and wind) significantly affected particulate matter (p ≤ 0.05) variations. However, associations with particulate matter were weak to moderate (r = 0.02 to 0.46) which were influenced by the surroundings in the locations of the sensors. A strong correlation with municipal refence instruments and the ability to detect pollution variations is enough accuracy for sensors to be used for awareness which the sensors did. In conclusion, the sensors can be used for air quality monitoring and it is important to do a background study of the area including the number of people in an area and sources of pollution if they are to be used for citizen awareness. Therefore, using sensors will bring more awareness in air quality monitoring by measuring air pollution concentrations in localised places that municipal air quality instruments cannot do