@article{10.1371/journal.pone.0136763, abstract = {

The issue of sustainability is at the top of the political and societal agenda, being considered of extreme importance and urgency. Human individual action impacts the environment both locally (e.g., local air/water quality, noise disturbance) and globally (e.g., climate change, resource use). Urban environments represent a crucial example, with an increasing realization that the most effective way of producing a change is involving the citizens themselves in monitoring campaigns (a citizen science bottom-up approach). This is possible by developing novel technologies and IT infrastructures enabling large citizen participation. Here, in the wider framework of one of the first such projects, we show results from an international competition where citizens were involved in mobile air pollution monitoring using low cost sensing devices, combined with a web-based game to monitor perceived levels of pollution. Measures of shift in perceptions over the course of the campaign are provided, together with insights into participatory patterns emerging from this study. Interesting effects related to inertia and to direct involvement in measurement activities rather than indirect information exposure are also highlighted, indicating that direct involvement can enhance learning and environmental awareness. In the future, this could result in better adoption of policies towards decreasing pollution.

}, author = {Sîrbu, Alina and Becker, Martin and Caminiti, Saverio and De Baets, Bernard and Elen, Bart and Francis, Louise and Gravino, Pietro and Hotho, Andreas and Ingarra, Stefano and Loreto, Vittorio and Molino, Andrea and Mueller, Juergen and Peters, Jan and Ricchiuti, Ferdinando and Saracino, Fabio and Servedio, Vito D. P. and Stumme, Gerd and Theunis, Jan and Tria, Francesca and Van den Bossche, Joris}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0136763}, interhash = {6abb09b5ac2137e557a84d7be10009b4}, intrahash = {f35761dd0fbd9ad8af7c8099e0b6aac4}, journal = {PLoS ONE}, month = {08}, number = 8, pages = {e0136763}, publisher = {Public Library of Science}, title = {Participatory Patterns in an International Air Quality Monitoring Initiative}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0136763}, volume = 10, year = 2015 } @inproceedings{HSWHFT2014, address = {Budapest, Hungary}, author = {Hasenfratz, David and Saukh, Olga and Walser, Christoph and Hueglin, Christoph and Fierz, Martin and Thiele, Lothar}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2014)}, interhash = {9a418e24cae67e23b62ca4b93f95d018}, intrahash = {72cae5af9853823b4d63e0a137aa0fe0}, month = mar, pages = {69--77}, title = {Pushing the spatio-temporal resolution limit of urban air pollution maps}, year = 2014 }