{"title":"Democratizing air: A co-created citizen science approach to indoor air quality monitoring","authors":"Sachit Mahajan , Rosy Mondardini , Dirk Helbing","doi":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.105890","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Indoor air quality (IAQ) is crucial for public health, yet many remain unaware of indoor pollutants. Although Citizen Science has enhanced outdoor air quality understanding, its application to IAQ remains underexplored. This study introduces a new co-creation methodology that addresses key limitations in existing IAQ monitoring practices by integrating value-sensitive design principles and a ‘facilitated emergence’ paradigm. Through three co-creation workshops, we engaged multiple stakeholders in every stage, from problem definition to data interpretation. We employed adaptive facilitation strategies to effectively balance power dynamics among stakeholders, ensuring inclusive decision-making and mitigating potential biases. Our 30-day data collection campaign provided real-time measurements of Particulate Matter (PM) concentrations. Analysis revealed several locations with Indoor/Outdoor (I/O) PM2.5 ratios close to or above 1, uncovering hidden IAQ complexities and emphasizing the need for localized monitoring. We showed how citizen-generated data can improve spatial resolution, detecting local variations missed by official networks. Feedback from the co-creation workshops demonstrated shifts in participants’ perceptions regarding IAQ, accountability, and their role in environmental decision-making, moving from passive awareness to active engagement. Our findings demonstrate how this value-sensitive and community-driven bottom-up approach can enhance air quality assessment, inform targeted IAQ management strategies, and empower citizens in environmental health decisions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48659,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Cities and Society","volume":"116 ","pages":"Article 105890"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sustainable Cities and Society","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210670724007145","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CONSTRUCTION & BUILDING TECHNOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Indoor air quality (IAQ) is crucial for public health, yet many remain unaware of indoor pollutants. Although Citizen Science has enhanced outdoor air quality understanding, its application to IAQ remains underexplored. This study introduces a new co-creation methodology that addresses key limitations in existing IAQ monitoring practices by integrating value-sensitive design principles and a ‘facilitated emergence’ paradigm. Through three co-creation workshops, we engaged multiple stakeholders in every stage, from problem definition to data interpretation. We employed adaptive facilitation strategies to effectively balance power dynamics among stakeholders, ensuring inclusive decision-making and mitigating potential biases. Our 30-day data collection campaign provided real-time measurements of Particulate Matter (PM) concentrations. Analysis revealed several locations with Indoor/Outdoor (I/O) PM2.5 ratios close to or above 1, uncovering hidden IAQ complexities and emphasizing the need for localized monitoring. We showed how citizen-generated data can improve spatial resolution, detecting local variations missed by official networks. Feedback from the co-creation workshops demonstrated shifts in participants’ perceptions regarding IAQ, accountability, and their role in environmental decision-making, moving from passive awareness to active engagement. Our findings demonstrate how this value-sensitive and community-driven bottom-up approach can enhance air quality assessment, inform targeted IAQ management strategies, and empower citizens in environmental health decisions.
期刊介绍：
Sustainable Cities and Society (SCS) is an international journal that focuses on fundamental and applied research to promote environmentally sustainable and socially resilient cities. The journal welcomes cross-cutting, multi-disciplinary research in various areas, including:
1. Smart cities and resilient environments;
2. Alternative/clean energy sources, energy distribution, distributed energy generation, and energy demand reduction/management;
3. Monitoring and improving air quality in built environment and cities (e.g., healthy built environment and air quality management);
4. Energy efficient, low/zero carbon, and green buildings/communities;
5. Climate change mitigation and adaptation in urban environments;
6. Green infrastructure and BMPs;
7. Environmental Footprint accounting and management;
8. Urban agriculture and forestry;
9. ICT, smart grid and intelligent infrastructure;
10. Urban design/planning, regulations, legislation, certification, economics, and policy;
11. Social aspects, impacts and resiliency of cities;
12. Behavior monitoring, analysis and change within urban communities;
13. Health monitoring and improvement;
14. Nexus issues related to sustainable cities and societies;
15. Smart city governance;
16. Decision Support Systems for trade-off and uncertainty analysis for improved management of cities and society;
17. Big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence applications and case studies;
18. Critical infrastructure protection, including security, privacy, forensics, and reliability issues of cyber-physical systems.
19. Water footprint reduction and urban water distribution, harvesting, treatment, reuse and management;
20. Waste reduction and recycling;
21. Wastewater collection, treatment and recycling;
22. Smart, clean and healthy transportation systems and infrastructure;
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