Sensor.Community is a citizen science infrastructure that invites citizens to become part of the community, build a sensor, generate Open Data to share on Maps.Sensor.Community, and join forces in local Sensor.Community groups to analyse the data. The goal is also finding like-minded people that care about the environment and the implications for health, to stay informed and exchange with neighbours. In the Netherlands, Sensor.Community is growing fast. The collaboration with Measure Together is very fruitful.
Sensor Community and Measure Together
Sensor.Community is a citizen science infrastructure that, much like Measure Together, supports local citizen science projects in the field of environmental measurements, such as air quality and noise. Contrary to Measure Together, Sensor.Community is a bottom-up movement organized by citizens for citizens on a voluntary basis. It provides citizen scientists with manuals on how to build a sensor kit in 24 languages and is active in over 70 countries with more than 14,000 sensor kits worldwide.
Synergy
Measure Together uses Sensor.Community data on the Measure Together platform, harvesting the Dutch data through the Sensor.Community API. We also actively encourage individual citizen scientists and citizen science communities to use the Sensor.Community method. For Measure Together this is a very convenient way to gather data. Moreover, there is added benefit in many people using similar sensor kits (e.g. based on the Nova SDS011 sensor). Measure Together, therefore, clearly profits from the fast growth of Sensor.Community.
Vice versa Sensor.Community in the Netherlands might not have grown so fast without the support of Measure Together (see onzelucht.nl and Measure Together Meierijstad). The Netherlands is the second largest contributor to the number of Sensor.Community sensor kits, after Germany (where Sensor.Community originated as Luftdaten). See AirRohr sensors active in the last 5 minutes
Sensor.Community sensorkits make up such a sizable chunk of the contributions to Measure Together, that you may ask: why do we need Measure Together? The answer lies in the fact that Measure Together is part of a governmental institute responsible for official monitoring. This adds credibility to the data and makes it easier for (local) governments and policy makers to take the data seriously and join the citizens in their efforts. Many of the citizen science communities making use of Measure Together infrastructure are indeed collaborations between many different stakeholders, often including municipalities. In addition, the combination of official data with citizen science data opens possibilities for calibration or correction of the citizen science data, assessment of data quality and the use of sensor data in models (see Figure below or the dataportal).
Official data and sensor data are used for more detailed air quality modeling.
The collaboration between the two infrastructures is therefore beneficial to both. Sensor.Community and Measure Together are happy to join forces, also in new fields such as noise measurements.
Noise data on the Sensor.Community map.
Sensor.Community is looking for possibilities of similar collaborations in other countries. In Flanders, there is a Samen voor Zuivere Lucht platform combining Sensor.Community data and official data. Samen voor Zuivere Lucht and Measure Together may perhaps serve as an inspiration and showcase of how to start integrating Sensor.Community data in the monitoring of the environment.
Flemish data portal Dataportaal | samenvoorzuiverelucht.eu