On Sunday, October 6, workshop for citizens who will measure air quality in the coming months, was organized at the Impact Hub in Belgrade, within DESCON. Citizen science project, Visible Data for Invisible Air, is being implemented in cooperation with partners Internet Society of Serbia and IoT company AllThingsTalk. This project is supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
The participants were firstly addressed by the training organizers. Desire Milošević (Internet Society of Serbia) welcomed the participants with an invitation to participate in other lectures and workshops within the DESCON conference which is focused on how technology and IoT can help to address global warming and the challenges of pollution. Mirjana Jovanovic (BOS) introduced the participants to the main institutional and normative framework governing the field of air quality, to make participants aware of the context within which public measurement is organized. Sanja Nasevski and Katarina Kosmina (UNDP) presented the Open Data - Open Opportunities project, which aims to bring data from state institutions closer to citizens by becoming more transparent, clearer, machine readable and free to use without restriction.
During the training, participants, with the mentorship of a team from AllThingsTalk, actively participated in assembling the devices they use in measuring air quality. In this way, they were thoroughly acquainted with all the elements that make up a measuring device, and then they have acquired the necessary knowledge and skills to properly install and use them. All devices will be networked and will display data on a shared platform in real time. The platform will be open and shared with the wider community to make air quality data as visible and accessible as possible due to the limited information we receive from public institutions.
These are devices that will measure PM10 and PM2.5 particles, temperature and humidity. It is important to emphasize that the data are not intended to parry official data, but the idea is to expand a public measurement network to obtain a representative sample that can point to the existing problem of polluted air in Serbia, and at the same time to exert pressure on decision makers.
It should be noted that, with this project, the Belgrade Open School is expanding the citizens network of air quality measurements established at the beginning of the year as part of the project Local Actors for Clean Energy and Air.
Photo source: Belgrade Open School