Five dozen urban cyclists from the city of Lisbon will help monitor Lisbon's air pollution. The project is called Open Seneca, was developed by a team of researchers from the UK, and is being launched in the Portuguese capital together with the Swedish capital, Stockholm. The great intention is to bring the citizens closer to the city.
Open Seneca consists, for now, of a small air pollution, temperature and humidity monitoring device that can be attached to any bicycle. The device is able to read the different indicators and store that data internally on a small microSD card, but when paired with Open Seneca's app on your phone, it can send the collected information to a centralized cloud.
In the case of Lisbon, the pollution, temperature and humidity data will be publicly - and anonymously, of course - accessible. through the Open Lisbon platformcomplementing the information collected by the municipality's fixed sensors and that are spread all over the city. In this Open Seneca project, which brings together the British team, FabLab Lisboa and the City Council, about 50 cyclists are participatingwho volunteered through a sign-up sheet and were selected based on some criteria such as how often they cycle and the areas they cycle through - one of the efforts of those who selected the candidates was to have people covering different parts of the city.
The participants received the Open Seneca devices at an informal meeting last Friday afternoon in Entrecampos. Beforehand, the volunteers participated in a workshop where they learned how to use the device and also had the opportunity to assemble it. The only reason they didn't take it with them right away is that the sensors were being calibrated at the fixed monitoring station in Entrecampos - right next door.
Each person can participate in this project for at least six months, but if they are out of Lisbon for a prolonged period they must return the device to make room for another person on the waiting list. Lisboa Para Pessoas talked to some of the volunteers. One of them, Tiago, told us that he had already had the idea of creating such a sensor through the platform and technology Arduinobut then learned about Open Seneca and signed up immediately. Gonçalo hopes to take the sensors close to the schools in order to monitor the pollution that accumulates in these places, at school entrances and exits, due to the accumulation of vehicles; he says he wants this data to make parents, educators, and school group directors aware of this invisible problem.
