Encouraging citizens to take part in almost every step of scientific air quality research improves their understanding of how air pollution affects their health, finds a new study, published in Science of the Total Environment journal, by researchers under the iSCAPE project from Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE),the IAAC Fab Lab Barcelona, Connected Places Catapult and T6 Ecosystems.
The study provides details about how introducing a multi-component ‘citizen science’ approach that allows people to take part in the scientific process of research – e.g. finding research problems, methodologies and conclusions in collaboration with the researchers – helps them to better understand their pollution exposure levels and feel more invested in both the research topic and the study’s outcomes.
Highlights of the study can be found below, while the full study can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2019.101800
Reference:
Mahajan, S., Kumar, P., Pinto, J.A., Riccetti, A., Schaaf, K., Camprodon, G., Smári, V., Antonella Passani, A., Forino, G., 2019. A Citizen Science Approach for Enhancing Public Understanding of Air Pollution. Sustainable Cities & Society, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2019.101800.