Now you can see the air quality in Sundsvall

Tue 24 May 2016 12:14

Sundsvall Municipality and Mid Sweden University are working together to find new methods to measure and visualize air quality in Sundsvall. A new interactive display that shows the air quality in the city and provides tips on what can be done to improve it.

interaktiv skärm, luftkvalitet

 Sundsvall Municipality and Mid Sweden University are collaborating in several projects, among others one project aim to find new methods to measure and visualize the air quality. The municipality has measured air particles and nitrogen oxide over a long period of time at two measurement stations in the city.

- We have examined how the existing measurements can be simplified so that we can have several monitoring stations around the Sundsvall, says Professor Bengt Oelmann who led the work with the help of new sensors and wireless communications.

The research center STC at Mid Sweden University has the number of prestudies, together with the municipality and one of them is to find a way to measure air quality cheaper to be able to measure in more places, and shown how measurements can be visualized.

Air quality in Sundsvall can now be monitored on an interactive display available on Stenstan Visitor Center. There is visitors can see current air quality and how it relates to the municipality's environmental goals and requirements. Changes over time can be followed and how you can influence the air in Sundsvall.

- We have two objectives in making air quality visible. The first is to launch a public opinion on environmental issues and the city's air quality and its' citizens to act environmentally friendly, says Professor Mårten Sjöström, who led the work with visualization. The second objective is to study how interactive visualization affect interest in Sundsvall environment, and how good the interactivity works in this visualization.

The prestudy has gathered expertise from the municipality's traffic department, environmental office and researchers from the university's research center STC.

- The work is part of the municipality's efforts to comply with environmental quality standards, says Björn Abelsson on City Planning, who participated in the work of the visualization. We have demands on us to reduce the levels of air pollution, therefore, we have developed a comprehensive action. An important part of the program is to get more people to walk, cycle or take the bus and good information about the current air quality is important in order to change people's travel habits.

Mid Sweden University research center STC - Sensible Things that Communicate, develops low-cost sensors and services for different needs. Now researchers hope to be able to continue the work with the city's air quality within the large research action SMART - Smart systems and services, which are scheduled to start in autumn 2016. There are plans to complement the two existing stations with wireless sensor system. This allows more data points established in Sundsvall and give a more accurate and updated information on the city's air quality and visualization solutions can be developed even more thanks to wireless technology.

The interactive screen at Stenstan Visitor Center will be unveiled Wednesday, May 25.

STC Sensible Things that Communicate logotyp

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The page was updated 5/24/2016