From Do-It-Yourself (DIY) to Do-It-Together (DIT): Reflections on designing a citizen-driven air quality monitoring framework in Taiwan

Mahajan, Sachit; Luo, Cyuan Heng; Wu, Dong Yi; Chen, Ling-Jyh

doi:10.1016/j.scs.2020.102628

Cited by 41 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Over the years, an increasing number of cities have been using such "open innovation" platforms to tackle challenging issues like air pollution [162], noise mapping [163] and radiation monitoring [164]. Some initiatives, such as "Make City" [165] or "Open Source Urbanism" [9,[166][167][168] do not leave it there, but truly co-create the city.…”

Section: Co-creation and Open Innovationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethics of Smart Cities: Towards Value-Sensitive Design and Co-Evolving City Life

et al. 2021

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The digital revolution has brought about many societal changes such as the creation of “smart cities”. The smart city concept has changed the urban ecosystem by embedding digital technologies in the city fabric to enhance the quality of life of its inhabitants. However, it has also led to some pressing issues and challenges related to data, privacy, ethics inclusion, and fairness. While the initial concept of smart cities was largely technology- and data-driven, focused on the automation of traffic, logistics and processes, this concept is currently being replaced by technology-enabled, human-centred solutions. However, this is not the end of the development, as there is now a big trend towards “design for values”. In this paper, we point out how a value-sensitive design approach could promote a more sustainable pathway of cities that better serves people and nature. Such “value-sensitive design” will have to take ethics, law and culture on board. We discuss how organising the digital world in a participatory way, as well as leveraging the concepts of self-organisation, self-regulation, and self-control, would foster synergy effects and thereby help to leverage a sustainable technological revolution on a global scale. Furthermore, a “democracy by design” approach could also promote resilience.

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Section: Co-creation and Open Innovationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethics of Smart Cities: Towards Value-Sensitive Design and Co-Evolving City Life

et al. 2021

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“…These projects are led by different entities including academic institutions and maker-spaces as well as collaborations between the two. The majority of projects cite central aims of developing sensors to facilitate citizen engagement (i.e., Smart Citizen Kit (SCK) [19]), development of decision-making tools (i.e., AirBox [28]) and to increase citizen awareness of air quality issues (i.e., hackAir [29]). In all of these projects, citizens are encouraged to participate in air quality monitoring by building a sensor or setting up an existing sensor.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

AirKit: A Citizen-Sensing Toolkit for Monitoring Air Quality

Mahajan

Gabrys

Armitage

2021

Sensors

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Increasing urbanisation and a better understanding of the negative health effects of air pollution have accelerated the use of Internet of Things (IoT)-based air quality sensors. Low-cost and low-power sensors are now readily available and commonly deployed by individuals and community groups. However, there are a wide range of such IoT devices in circulation that differently focus on problems of sensor validation, data reliability, or accessibility. In this paper, we present AirKit, which was developed as an integrated and open source “social IoT technology.” AirKit enables a comprehensive approach to citizen-sensing air quality through several integrated components: (1) the Dustbox 2.0, a particulate matter sensor; (2) Airsift, a data analysis platform; (3) a reliable and automatic remote firmware update system; (4) a “Data Stories” method and tool for communicating citizen data; and (5) an AirKit logbook that provides a guide for designing and running air quality projects, along with instructions for building and using AirKit components. Developed as a social technology toolkit to foster open processes of research co-creation and environmental action, Airkit has the potential to generate expanded engagements with IoT and air quality by improving the accuracy, legibility and use of sensors, data analysis and data communication.

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“…The current version of the toolbox accepts data in different file types including commaseparated values (CSV) files and Excel. As most of the citizen science air quality monitoring projects allow you to download the data as a CSV file [5,22,24], it is set as the default file type the user should upload to perform different actions on the data. If the user has the data in Excel file format, the toolbox allows the user to convert it into CSV format for further analysis.…”

Section: Data Organization and Plottingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As citizen science grows bigger, more ambitious projects are undertaken by the scientists in collaboration with the citizens [4]. To promote inclusiveness, transparency, and open data, researchers have been developing co-creation studies where citizens are actively involved in large-scale deployment of lowcost air quality sensors to create air quality maps and tools not just for one city, but for an entire region [5]. This has led to an increase in the availability of air quality data as well as interest from multiple stakeholders who want to explore the real-time data to extract locally relevant information [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most of the citizen-driven environment monitoring networks have dedicated applications and platforms for data visualization and analysis. For example, Purple Air PA-II sensors have a map-based visualization and the AirSensor R package [10]; AirBox has chatbot [11], Grafana based visualization, pollution maps, route finding application [5]; Luftdaten has a network map [12] and AirBeam has AirCasting map [13]. However, all these applications and resources are sensor-specific.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Vayu: An Open-Source Toolbox for Visualization and Analysis of Crowd-Sourced Sensor Data

Mahajan

2021

Sensors

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Recent advances in sensor technology and the availability of low-cost and low-power sensors have changed the air quality monitoring paradigm. These sensors are being widely used by scientists and citizens for monitoring air quality at finer spatial-temporal resolution. Such practices are opening up opportunities to enhance the traditional monitoring networks, but at the same time, these sensors are producing large data sets that can become overwhelming and challenging when it comes to the scientific tools and skills required to analyze the data. To address this challenge, an open-source, robust, and cross-platform sensor data analysis toolbox called Vayu is developed that allows researchers and citizens to do detailed and reproducible analyses of air quality data. Vayu combines the power of visualization and statistical analysis using a simple and intuitive graphical user interface. Additionally, it offers a comprehensive set of tools for systematic analysis such as data conversion, interpolation, aggregation, and prediction. Even though Vayu was developed with air quality research in mind, it can be used to analyze different kinds of time-series data.

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From Do-It-Yourself (DIY) to Do-It-Together (DIT): Reflections on designing a citizen-driven air quality monitoring framework in Taiwan

Cited by 41 publications

References 42 publications

Ethics of Smart Cities: Towards Value-Sensitive Design and Co-Evolving City Life

Ethics of Smart Cities: Towards Value-Sensitive Design and Co-Evolving City Life

AirKit: A Citizen-Sensing Toolkit for Monitoring Air Quality

Vayu: An Open-Source Toolbox for Visualization and Analysis of Crowd-Sourced Sensor Data

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