York: Making air pollution visible
Aims and Objectives
Air pollution is known as an invisible killer. WHO data highlights that 99% of the global pollution breathe air that exceeds guidelines. However, due to air pollution being “invisible”, visualising air pollution, making data accessible and engaging the public is challenging. This project will bring together atmospheric scientists from the University of York’s Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories with Claire Nattress a performance artist from York St John university to establish new communication routes to disseminate air pollution data to the public.
We plan to equip cyclists within the city with personal air quality monitors, which will collect real time measurements of five air pollutants. This data will feed into a custom, free online map of York which will visualise air pollution across the city. The project will foster an exchange of thoughts, feelings, note-taking and smells between the participants to help reveal insights, attunements, knowledge and reflections about air pollution. An initial workshop will recruit and inform participants and understand their current thoughts surrounding air quality generally and within York. A second workshop will be held once data has been collected and analysed to highlight the findings.
A public exhibition will then display visual art alongside data from the project to highlight the project findings and enable discussions between the local community and key stakeholders within the city.
Project Outputs
York Air Map website
News and Updates
Clare Nattress was interviewed about York Air Map on BBC Radio York, Leeds, Humberside, and Sheffield on Sunday 6 August. The interview starts at 1 hr 15 minutes and you can listen to the full interview here:
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Join Sile for Sunday afternoon music, conversation and updates.
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The YESI Fellows scheme has allowed for a project to be funded that generally falls outside the spheres and size of UKRI grants. The bridging of art-science has real advantages when communicating to the public, allowing us to visualise a topic from a different angle. This funding has also allowed us to purchase sensors which have a lifetime of several years, and as such will allow us to continue the project in the future, measuring air quality metrics at different times of year.
- Dr Daniel Bryant