CurieuzeNeuzen Vlaanderen is a citizen science project in which 20.000 citizens set-up NO2 measuring tubes near their own house/offices during May 2018. The aim to acquire a detailed map of air quality in Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), both in cities as well as in the countryside. Over 52,000 citizens in Flanders volunteered to monitor the traffic related pollutant NO2.
The citizen science project, the largest on air quality to-date, builds upon the initial version of the project that focused on the city of Antwerp in 2016 with 3,000 volunteer participants. In the end 20,000 participants were chosen covering a cross section of the region ensuring that the data could be used to highlight the hotspots and validate further the model used to map air quality at a high resolution across Flanders, VITO’s ATMO-Street mode. Both projects resulted in high-quality high resolution datasets that have been used to improve ATMO-Street for Flanders.
The project consortium led by University of Antwerp, consisted of KULeuven, the Flemish government agencies responsible for air quality air quality (VMM, IRCEL), and key media companies (de Standaard, Kariboo).
VITO’s air quality modelling team collaborated with the consortium partners during selection and analysis of the results for the model validation.
More information can be found on the following webpage: 2018.curieuzeneuzen.be.
