Sustainable Cities and Society 52 (2020) 101800

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Sustainable Cities and Society

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scs

A citizen science approach for enhancing public understanding of air T

pollution
Sachit Mahajana, Prashant Kumara, , Janaina Antonino Pintoa,b,c, Agnese Riccettid,
⁎

Katinka Schaafd, Guillem Camprodone, Viktor Smárie, Antonella Passanif, Giuseppe Forinof
a
Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Surrey,
Guildford, GU2 7XH, United Kingdom
b
Department of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, 31270-010, Brazil
c
Faculty of Mobility Engineering, Federal University of Itajubá, Itabira, 35903-087, Brazil
d
Future Cities Catapult, London, EC1R 0BE, United Kingdom
e
IAAC, Fab Lab Barcelona, SmartCitizen, Pujades 102, 08005, Barcelona, Spain
f
T6 Ecosystems s.r.l., 00187, Rome, Italy

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The deterioration in air quality is a challenging problem worldwide. There is a need to raise awareness among
Co-creation the people and support informed decision making. Over the years, citizen science activities have been im-
Low-cost sensors plemented for environmental monitoring and raising awareness but most of such works are contributory in
Citizen science nature, i.e. task design, planning and analysis are performed by professional researchers and citizens act as
Interactive quiz
participants. Our objective is to demonstrate that citizen science can be used as a ‘tool’ to enhance public
Behavioural interventions
understanding of air pollution by engaging communities and local stakeholders. We present a co-creation based
citizen science approach which incorporates the ideas of inclusion, where citizens are involved in most of the
steps of the scientific process; collaboration, where the citizen scientists define research problems and meth-
odologies, and reciprocation, where citizen scientists share their observations through storytelling. We integrate
the use of interactive air quality quizzes, offline questionnaires and low-cost air quality monitoring sensors. The
results show that such methods can generate insightful data which can assist in understanding people’s per-
ception and exposure levels at a fine-grained level. It was also observed that community engagement in air
quality monitoring can enhance partnerships between the community and research fraternity.

1. Introduction sensors (Bibri, 2018; Bibri & Krogstie, 2017). Smart cities would have
infrastructures like smart pollution monitoring and sensing systems
Deteriorating air quality is an important problem in both highly (Silva & Mendes, 2012). Raising awareness and creating environmental
industrialized and less industrialized countries (Kumar et al., 2014; consciousness (Rickenbacker, Brown, & Bilec, 2019) among citizens is
WHO, 2014). It is adversely affecting human health and well-being of utmost importance to efficiently assess the harmful impact of air
(Ghorani-Azam, Riahi-Zanjani, & Balali-Mood, 2016). Air pollution is a pollution on human health and the sustainability of cities.
complex mix of particles and gases (Heal et al., 2012). Particulate Most of the official institutions and government bodies use tradi-
matter is known for causing cardiovascular and respiratory problems tional environmental monitoring equipment. Although they are accu-
(Brook et al., 2010; Cascio & Long, 2018) among people of all age rate and precise, the number of such monitoring units is sparse (Kumar
groups (He, Fan, & Zhou, 2016) and causing environmental damage et al., 2015). To get more fine-grained environmental information, a
(European Environment Agency, 2014). To build sustainable cities of citizen science approach is being followed, which involves using low-
the future, it becomes essential to reduce air pollution and raise cost sensors for community engaged environmental monitoring. Such
awareness among people which still remains an open challenge (Silva, data can be considered as informal environmental sensing data (Kamel
Khan, & Han, 2018). This could be achieved by interdisciplinary re- Boulos et al., 2011). In most studies involving citizens, environmental
search and using analytical internet of things framework of smart monitoring is performed using smart sensors enabled by devices

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (P. Kumar).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2019.101800
Received 16 June 2019; Received in revised form 23 August 2019; Accepted 23 August 2019
Available online 25 August 2019
2210-6707/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S. Mahajan, et al. Sustainable Cities and Society 52 (2020) 101800

utilizing information and communication technologies (Chen et al., citizen science approach for air quality monitoring and exposure esti-
2017; Perera, Zaslavsky, Christen, & Georgakopoulos, 2014). Citizen mation. A majority of these works focus on using low-cost sensors to
science can be described as a process in which communities and in- understand human behaviour and perception (Commodore, Wilson,
dividuals are involved in designing a research question and performing Muhammad, Svendsen, & Pearce, 2017; English et al., 2017; Hubbell
scientific experiments with minimum involvement of professional sci- et al., 2018; Pritchard & Gabrys, 2016; Willett, Aoki, Kumar,
entists (Eitzel et al., 2017). Another important part of the citizen sci- Subramanian, & Woodruff, 2010). A few others have focused on
ence approach is having open software and open hardware. This en- crowdsourcing techniques (Castell et al., 2015; Jerrett et al., 2017;
courages participation as it enables people to study the devices/ Leonardi, Cappellotto, Caraviello, Lepri, & Antonelli, 2014; Zappi,
instruments easily and make changes and also share those changes with Bales, Park, Griswold, & Rosing, 2012). Low-cost sensors have been
others people as well. It also verifies the approach followed by the re- used widely (Heimann et al., 2015; Lewis et al., 2016; Ottosen & Kumar,
searchers, if general public can redo the design and run the software 2019) for monitoring air quality at neighborhood scale as well as city
successfully, it verifies the authenticity of the work. Using the data from scales. Such an approach generally involves a large-scale deployment of
open portals, the citizens can get involved at an individual or com- low-cost sensors to gather air quality data for a particular location. The
munity level and contribute to the campaigns that are carried out by data is then used for understanding the trends in air quality at a finer
other projects but shared on open data portals (Jiang et al., 2016). resolution. However, it has been observed that it is important to test
In the past few years, many projects have used citizen science ac- low-cost sensors with reference monitors before using them for field-
tivities to improve citizens’ understanding of air pollution and raise studies (Jiao et al., 2016). In another work (English et al., 2017), the
awareness. For example, Chen et al. (2017) proposed an open frame- authors have described a collaborative air quality monitoring network
work for participatory PM2.5 (particulate matter ≤2.5 μm in diameter) which employs a community-based air quality monitoring process.
sensing in Taiwan. The core idea behind the work was to have open However, the individuals and communities are just treated as partici-
hardware and open software tools. It allowed citizen engagement at a pants and their involvement is limited to data collection in most of
grass-roots level. The data quality was verified using anomaly detection these studies (Schäfer & Kieslinger, 2016; Wiederhold, Riva, &
tools (Chen et al., 2018) and the PM2.5 data was made available to the Graffigna, 2013). Here, we adopt an integrated citizen approach which
general public. Later, Jiang, Bregt, and Kooistra (2018) used online ensures meaningful community interaction and participation. The citi-
surveys to investigate and understand the perception of citizen science zens are no longer just treated as the participants but more like colla-
communities and experts about environmental issues and sensing data. borators and are involved in all the steps; from problem formulation
The main idea behind this work was to integrate official environment and experimentation to results dissemination. This provides new
monitoring data with data sensed informally by citizen communities channels for environmental sensing and monitoring. With the ques-
and show that formally and informally sensed data actually comple- tionnaires, we can get an idea about how people perceive a certain
ment each other. Earlier, Bell, Cornford, and Bastin (2015) analysed the problem. However, our approach of equipping the people with low-cost
data obtained through citizen weather stations set up by citizens in the sensors gives them a first-hand experience to define the research pro-
UK. Although a large amount of data was sensed using citizen weather blem and design the experiments that they feel could shine more light
stations, it was observed that instrument biases affected the data as on existing problems.
well. In another example, citizen science noise monitoring was con- We examine the possibility of integrating conventional techniques
ducted by DHondt, Stevens, and Jacobs (2013). The work claimed that such as using a questionnaire and interactive quiz with activities such
the accuracy achieved through noise monitoring carried out by citizens as using low-cost sensors for exposure monitoring to enhance public
was equal to standard noise monitoring. Other works have also been understanding of air pollution. We identify and discuss the challenges
conducted which used citizen engagement and participation to tackle associated with community engagement, low-cost sensor use, data
environmental issues: climate change (Hurlbert & Liang, 2012), air gathering and knowledge extraction. We also recognise the opportu-
quality analysis (Kim, Mankoff, & Paulos, 2013; Paulos, Honicky, & nities for developing a citizen science community facilitating co-crea-
Hooker, 2009), forecast (Mahajan, Liu, Tsai, & Chen, 2018) and noise tion which could potentially raise public awareness about air pollution
pollution analysis (Maisonneuve, Stevens, & Ochab, 2010). Table 1 and allow individuals and communities to reduce personal exposure to
presents a summary of relevant literature on the application of the air pollution.

Table 1
Summary of relevant research studies undertaken on air pollution monitoring and exposure estimation using citizen science.
Author (Year) Study Focus

Hubbell et al. (2018) Focused on social science and the use of air quality sensors for understanding people’s perception, attitude and behaviour. The authors also
discussed how a collaboration of citizen scientist and professionals can enhance understanding of sensor technology use which can potentially
raise air quality awareness.
Commodore et al. (2017) Study about how community-based participatory research was driven by the desire to be more aware of air quality in the community and a desire
to learn about health issues due to pollution exposure.
English et al. (2017) Highlights of the significance of community engagement in every aspect of air quality monitoring when creating a community-wide monitoring
scheme.
Jerrett et al. (2017) Performed studies which showed that low-cost sensors could potentially reduce exposure measurement error and could act as a valid data source
for citizen science studies.
Pritchard and Gabrys (2016) Analysis of how citizen sensing can be used not only to develop new technologies but to develop new partnerships, communities which can lead to
a joint effort towards addressing issues like air pollution.
Castell et al. (2015) Presented the Citi-Sense MOB approach which facilitated public participation in environmental governance using mobile technologies.
Leonardi et al. (2014) Presented a mobile crowdsensing system for air quality. The aim was to monitor air pollution and also to get the participant’s reflection on their
pollution exposure.
Zappi et al. (2012) Proposed the CitiSense project which evaluated how people responded to getting feedback about the air quality in their surroundings. The
participants were provided with an online mapping tool to visualize air quality pattern. Interviews were performed to understand if the air quality
data influenced their behaviour in any way.
Willett et al. (2010) Interviewed community members, researchers and regulators who were engaged in air pollution measurements using personal air quality sensors.
The authors used the responses to derive design principles and frameworks for data collection and knowledge extraction.

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S. Mahajan, et al. Sustainable Cities and Society 52 (2020) 101800

2. Methodology

Our approach encompasses three basic ideas: (i) Inclusion, which

can be defined as a way to encourage participation at the individual as
well as community level to foster strong relationships between practi-
tioners and the citizens (Hecker et al., 2018). The key idea is to have an
approach which fosters openness and diversity in representation
making the scientific process more participatory by including multiple
stakeholders. The aim is to involve local communities as well as en-
courage underrepresented groups to define and investigate the im-
portant issues they are facing. The implications of diverse community
participation in citizen science activities can be far-reaching. This can
lead to a global network of citizen scientists sharing their ideas and
data; thus creating a large network of ecosystem monitoring. We use
mechanisms such as seminars and citizen science workshops (Section
2.3) to involve people from different genders and age groups and equip
them to engage with the subject area and conduct research. (ii) Colla-
boration, a key aspect of our approach that involves interaction be-
tween the researchers, communities and policymakers. The main idea is
to provide an environment where communities and scientists can col-
laborate towards a common goal that further leads to community ca-
pacity building. Ideas and resources are shared to support initiatives to
address critical problems like air pollution and build inclusive and
dynamic communities. (iii) Reciprocation, an important aspect of our
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of an integrated co-creation citizen science approach
approach that involves active debating over key outputs and results for air quality awareness.
dissemination. Engaging citizens in effective communication with
professional scientist is one of the key issues for citizen science re-
search. Instead of having series of formal sessions, we followed a 2.1. Interactive air pollution quiz
storytelling method that promoted interaction between participants and
the researchers. The storytelling sessions provided citizens a platform to An interactive air quality quiz was designed to engage people in a
clearly present their overall experience by contextualizing the story i.e. fun way but at the same time passing relevant research and significant
identifying the aim, understanding the need and identifying the ob- information about air pollution in a simplified manner. The air quality
stacles and finding solutions. Citizens lead the debates and the re- quiz, which could be played online (https://quiz.iscape.smartcitizen.
searchers act as observers and facilitators. This gives a sense of em- me/) as well as using a joystick-based console (Fig. S1), allowed the
powerment to the citizens who feel that their opinions and views are user to assess their qualitative level of air pollution exposure, through
heard and valued. answering a number of simple questions as shown in Table 2. To choose
All the three ideas of inclusion, collaboration and reciprocation are the correct tool for engagement and information, we conducted a series
inter-related and are important for the effectiveness of our approach. of brainstorming sessions and exchanges between the team of pollution,
With an inclusive environment, we encourage participation and di- social, data, and citizen science scientists, where several aspects were
versity making sure that even marginalized groups are also included. A considered. The basic idea was to have a portable interactive platform
collaborative environment fosters the relationship between researchers, to spread awareness about combating air pollution with characteristics
citizens and policymakers that provides a platform to share ideas and such as: playful, informative, interactive, portable and possible to dis-
resources to tackle pressing issues. The results obtained through the play indoors and outdoors. The interactive display was the most com-
collaborative approach are then discussed and debated on to under- prehensive solution, including all the above, while guaranteeing the
stand the effectiveness of the adopted methods and future course of high level of feasibility, together with a degree of replicability and
action. sustainability. The air quality quiz questions were designed in a way so
Fig. 1 presents an overview of our co-creation citizen science ap- that it can engage people irrespective of their digital literacy or tech-
proach for air pollution awareness and empowering citizens with nical knowledge about air pollution (Table 2). The questions were
knowledge for pollution mitigation. We integrated a number of com- primarily based on both the generic understanding of air pollution and
ponents: (i) an interactive online air pollution quiz which gives the user the outcome of our research focusing on local study area, covering to-
an estimation of pollution exposure, (ii) an offline questionnaire to get pics such as exposure at intersection (Goel & Kumar, 2015), exposure
participant’s views and suggestions about the quiz content and design, mitigation via green infrastructure along roadsides (Abhijith & Kumar,
and (iii) citizen science workshops facilitating air pollution monitoring 2019; Abhijith et al., 2017), exposure to air pollutants during com-
using low-cost sensors. Co-creation citizen science can help in achieving muting (Kumar et al., 2018; Rivas, Kumar, & Hagen-Zanker, 2017) and
a wide range of social and scientific outcomes. The citizen science pedestrian exposure to airborne particles and effect of roadside vege-
workshops are aimed at citizen engagement and discussion. The ques- tation (Abhijith & Kumar, 2019; Al-Dabbous & Kumar, 2014). They
tionnaire and interactive quiz help in understanding people’s opinions were simplified to the level where people could easily read and un-
and suggestions about the technology aspect of citizen science that can derstand. Participants were asked eight questions and based on the
be later incorporated for improving the existing design and technolo- answers their exposure was estimated. The questions were designed in
gical frameworks. The interactive quiz and offline questionnaire were such a way that it would give an idea about how people deal with air
designed for the Guildford Living Lab as a part of EU project iSCAPE pollution in everyday life and based on their choices how much are they
(Improving the Smart Control of Air Pollution in Europe) (https:// exposed to pollution. The questions and answer choices are elaborated
www.iscapeproject.eu/) by the University of Surrey’s team in co- in Table 2. Depending on their choices, the interactive display provided
operation with Future Cities Catapult (FCC; London, UK) and Institute tips on how to reduce exposure to air pollution (Tables S1 and S2). The
for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC; Barcelona, Spain). interactive quiz system console was initially placed at Guildford Bor-
ough Council offices in August 2018 for about three months and was

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S. Mahajan, et al. Sustainable Cities and Society 52 (2020) 101800

Table 2
Interactive quiz questions with answer choices.
Questions Answers with options

Q1: Where do you live? 0 - I live next to a busy road

1 - I live on a quiet street with little traffic
Q2: What kind of road do you walk down most often? 0 - On pavements close to traffic
1 - On pavements behind hedges
Q3: Where do you stand while waiting to cross a traffic light? 0 - Next to the curb, so I can start crossing right when it’s green
1 - A few metres back from the curb
Q4: When are you most likely to go cycling? 0 - Rush hour (roughly between 7–10 am and 4–7 pm)
1 - Off-peak
Q5: When stopped in heavy traffic, do you prefer to have your car windows open or closed? 0 - Closed
1- Open
Q6: When stopping briefly in your car, what do you do? 0 - I tend to leave the car running as I’m only stopping for a short time
1 - I always switch the motor off when stationary, even if it’s only briefly
Q7: Which of the following is a bigger cause of air pollution in Guildford? 0 - Airport
1 - Traffic
Q8: How visible do you think this PM2.5 is in the air we breathe? 0 - It’s a large dust particle and can be found only in visible air pollution
1 - Some types of PM are smaller than a human hair and are invisible to the naked
eye

widely used by people. Later, it was placed at the University of Surrey, community engagement. These citizen science workshops were used as
UK, campus. It was also regularly used during the citizen science a tool to build the iSCAPE’s Guildford Living Lab community (https://
workshops (Section 2.3) and other Guildford Living Lab activities such livinglabs.iscapeproject.eu/guildford/). The citizen science workshops
as community events and co-creation workshops. Thus, its widespread were organized with the aim of active engagement of people from
use allowed us to capture a wide range of communities. different backgrounds and age groups interested in sensing air quality
using low-cost sensors. As a part of our two citizen science workshops,
2.1.1. Technical description of the quiz development and operation we distributed ten smart sensor kits to people to do their own experi-
The quiz was designed as a web application using the React Web ments. The participants were explained in detail about how the sensors
framework which is a JavaScript library for developing interactive user work, how they could use them to get the best possible results and best
interface (Gackenheimer, 2015). All the content is fully decoupled from way to interpret the data. It was observed that most of the participants
the app and stored as a separate JSON file allowing multiple versions or had a basic idea about air pollution. A brief session was organized
translations of the quiz to be easily built and loaded. The application is during the first workshop in which participants were explained about
hosted in Github (Camprodon & Smári, 2019) and served using Github what PM2.5 is and how it varies based on different scenarios (location,
pages, allowing a fast and efficient workflow between developers and day time and night time, weekdays and weekends). The idea was to
researchers providing new content. Participant’s interactions are stored provide guidance to people so that they could collect, analyse and in-
using Google Analytics by making use of the custom event tracking terpret their data. The participants were provided with the iSCAPE ci-
feature. We designed a wood stand that provides users with a playful tizen science pack which included the guidance and recommendation
interface, inspired by traditional arcade machines, to interact with the pack for successful data collection. The users were made aware that
quiz. We took advantage of the Gamepad API now supported by all these measurements should not be made for regulatory compliance
modern web browsers to interface with an off the shelf Arcade USB purposes, given that these were low-cost sensors and data collected was
Joystick Kit. The stand also includes a Raspberry Pi running the quiz over the short-term. A total of 25 people were recruited using word of
web app removing the need for an external computer or an internet mouth marketing and workshop promotion, who participated and de-
connection. In this case, participant interaction data is stored locally as bated over key issues related to air pollution and personal exposure
a CSV file by a small Node web server. during the first citizen science workshop. For the first citizen science
workshop, 11 of the 25 total participants provided details about their
2.2. Offline questionnaire for user feedback about the quiz demographic data. Of these 11 participants, two were in the 18–35 age
range, five were in the 36–50 age range, one was in the 51–65 age
A short offline questionnaire was designed, based on slight adap- range, and three were in the 66–75 age range. Out of 11 participants, 8
tations from Kessel et al. (2018) to understand participant’s views and were men and three women. Five participants were self-employed or
opinions after playing with an interactive quiz (Table S3). The ques- employed, 2 were students and 3 were retired, while 1 was a home-
tionnaire inquired about participants’ opinions regarding general as- maker. Three participants had a Bachelor degree and other 5 held a
pects like interface and navigation of the interactive quiz. The anon- Master degree, while 3 had other academic degrees. All the participants
ymity of the participants was maintained and the questions were were locally from Guildford (Surrey, UK) and were enthusiastic about
general and intuitive. The participants were asked in this questionnaire using the sensor kits to monitor personal exposure. Ten low cost-sensors
about how they rated the quiz design in terms of the overall interface, were distributed among the participants during the first citizen science
ease of using it, content, colours and font size. The response range was workshop. The citizen science workshop participants came from dif-
from 1 to 6; 1 meant they found it good and 6 meant they did not find it ferent backgrounds. Some of them were retired environmental research
useful. In addition, the participants were also asked to write their professionals, some of them were from different communities around
suggestions, ideas, and any criticism concerning the quiz, what they Guildford. It was found out that almost all of the participants had a
liked the most and what bothered them. background idea about air pollution and environmental monitoring. We
distributed the sensors based on background knowledge of the parti-
2.3. Citizen engagement through iSCAPE citizen science workshop cipants about the sensors and air pollution. They were explained during
the workshops about the steps they have to follow for a successful data
Fig. 2 presents the flowchart of the two citizen science workshops collection. For some cases where the participants lived in the same
that were organised (in November and December 2018) to facilitate neighbourhood, a sensor was given to one of the participants.

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S. Mahajan, et al. Sustainable Cities and Society 52 (2020) 101800

Fig. 2. Flowchart showing different stages of two citizen science workshops.

Our approach was based on environmental monitoring using low- level can be estimated. The exposure was put in a range from 0 to 6; 0
cost sensors and do-it-yourself (DIY) digital platforms (https:// being the lowest and 6 being the highest. The quiz had 8 questions in
smartcitizen.me/). Smart citizen kits were distributed to the partici- total as shown in Table 2. First six questions were based on the user’s
pants who used those kits to perform self-designed experiments ad- surroundings and the choices user makes in their day to day life and the
dressing the broader questions like finding pollution hotspots in their last two questions were of generic nature to test user’s knowledge about
area, quantifying the exposure near traffic lights, personal exposure air quality source in Guildford and PM2.5. Therefore, we only took the
monitoring indoors, etc. The smart citizen kit 2.0 (Fig. S2) with a first six questions and the response for those questions to calculate the
particle sensor and battery with two mounting brackets, microSD card exposure level. Every question presented a user with two options and
and a USB cable were used. For the second citizen science workshop, based on the response the user was given a score, 1 if the answer meant
around 30 people participated that included ten people from the first the user was more exposed to pollution and 0 if the user was less ex-
workshop who received the sensors. Citizen scientists who used the posed to pollution. For example, in the first question, the user was
smart citizen kits discussed the experiments they conducted, followed asked “Where do you live?”. If the user selected “I live next to a busy
by a debate over the results during the second citizen science workshop. road”, +1 was added to the exposure and if the user selected “I live on
a quiet street with little traffic”, +0 was added to the exposure score.
2.4. Data collection and analysis Similarly, scores were calculated for remaining five questions and at the
end of the quiz an exposure range from 0 to 6 was calculated. These
The data were collected via three main streams, in the form of an were based on slight adaptations from Kessel et al. (2018). The results
interactive quiz (Section 2.1), offline survey (Section 2.2) and low-cost suggested that around 27% of the participants had exposure over level
air quality sensors (Section 2.3). The interactive quiz could be played 4, which is on the higher side. This gives an idea of how people are
online as well as using a console. The results from online interactive susceptible to air pollution even when they are just following their daily
quiz were saved in the online database whereas the results from the routine.
console were saved in the Raspberry Pi. Participants who attended iS- Another set of data was obtained when the quiz was played online
CAPE citizen science workshops used the sensors for two weeks and using a laptop, desktop or mobile phones by online users. In total, 43
conducted their own experiments. Regular reminders and offline com- responses were recorded. Behaviour analysis of the participants was
munication were done to stimulate responses and the sensors were re- performed, suggesting that most of the users played the online quiz
turned by the participants after the two weeks test period. For data during weekdays (Fig. 4a). Interestingly, it was also observed that
analysis, data visualisation and descriptive statistics, we used statistical among all users, 35% were new users and the remaining 65% were
analysis tools. The preliminary analysis was done using Microsoft Excel returning users. It meant that there were users who played the quiz
and later it was performed using R Statistical Software (R Development multiple times.
Core Team, 2016). Because of the large amount of data, questions were The participants also gave their thoughts and suggestions about the
grouped together which facilitated the interpretation and analysis. The interactive quiz via the offline questionnaire during citizen science
visualisation of the data gathered via the smart citizen kit during the workshops. In order to maintain the anonymity of the participants and
citizen science workshops was realised by a collaboration between FCC differentiate them, we have used the following terminologies in the
and IAAC and was performed using Python programming language subsequent text: PQ#number (participants who used joystick based
(FCC, 2019). console to play the interactive quiz), PO#number (offline questionnaire
participant), and CS#number (citizen scientist). Some of the quotes by
3. Results and discussion the participants explained the public perception of air pollution and
how they rated the interactive quiz. When asked about how beneficial
3.1. Results of interactive air quality quiz the quiz was, especially for the context of quiz questions, one of the
participant’s responded: “The question about the curbside was interesting
In total, we received 140 responses which were extracted from the as it made me consider the mini-scale decisions I make. Clarity and ease of
Raspberry Pi of the interactive quiz console. These responses did not the interactive quiz was great (PQ #1).” They were also asked to give an
include any incomplete quiz data. Based on the participant’s responses, overall review of the interactive quiz. PQ#2 said, “More detailed ques-
their exposure was estimated at the end of the quiz followed by some tions meant more detailed advice.” PQ#3 said: “The level of detail is good.”
tips to reduce their overall exposure (Tables S1 and S2). Fig. 3a shows PQ#4 mentioned, “I like the information about air pollution and how I can
the response of participants in the form of 0 or 1 for all the questions. 0 reduce the exposure.” The participants, in general, appeared to be in-
and 1 correspond to different choices of answers which have been formed about the factors that lead to high pollution exposure. The in-
elaborated in Table 2. Fig. 3b shows the exposure estimate. The ex- teresting finding was that, although people were aware that some of
posure estimate is based on the choices made by the participants for their daily routine choices could increase their pollution exposure, the
different questions. Each question is based on the general under- real talking point among the participants during the citizen science
standing of air pollution as well as the choices which people make in workshops was the extent of exposure variation as suggested by the
their day to day life. Once all the answers are collected, the exposure quiz. This gave a clear picture of people’s perception of air pollution

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S. Mahajan, et al. Sustainable Cities and Society 52 (2020) 101800

Fig. 3. Data analysis of quiz including: (a) participants response for different questions; and (b) exposure estimation within a range of 0–6; 0 being the lowest and 6
being the highest exposure level.

and how their choices can be influenced in a positive way by using ended questions. When asked if the participants felt something could be
interactive tools like the air pollution quiz. improved. PO#1 mentioned, “I guess the design could be more creative.
But it is very clear, which I loved.” PO#2 said, “I found the operation simple
3.2. Results of the offline questionnaire for user feedback about the quiz and intuitive. It’s easy to operate.” According to PO#3, “The design seems
to be good and efficient. The present way of guiding is good.” A similar
Fig. 5 shows the plots for the data analysis of offline questionnaire. pattern was observed in the responses of the majority of the participants
The idea behind designing the offline questionnaire was to evaluate who felt that the interactive quiz design was effective and easy to play
what participants thought about the interactive quiz console and if they with.
had suggestion/criticism about it. We asked the participants some basic
information about their age and gender. It was interesting to see that
people from many age groups showed interest in the interactive quiz 3.3. Results of citizen science workshops
console. We had participants from age of 20–79 (Fig. 5a). The partici-
pants were asked about the intuitiveness and simplicity of the quiz and The iSCAPE citizen science workshops were used as a way to start a
majority of the answers were positive (Fig. 5b). To get a better un- citizen science community-led air quality monitoring scheme. The
derstanding of the participant’s experience, we also asked them about broader objective was to measure PM1, PM2.5 and PM10 using a low-cost
features of the quiz such as the overall context, size of buttons, colours, air pollution sensor and to understand how pollution exposure varies in
etc. The response range was from 1 to 6; 1 being the best score and 6 indoor and outdoor environments, especially PM2.5 concentration be-
being the lowest score. The results are shown in Fig. 5c and d. Majority cause PM2.5 poses as one of the biggest threats to human health (Heal,
of the participants thought highly of the quiz characteristic and fea- Kumar, & Harrison, 2012). Each of the ten of our citizen science kit
tures. users (referred hereafter as citizen scientists) were asked to present
The offline questionnaire asked the participants to give their as- their findings during the second citizen science workshop. All of them
sessment of the interactive air quality quiz and a general idea of their presented some interesting results (Table S4). In the next sections, we
awareness with a specific emphasis on air pollution. Majority of the discuss a few distinct results that provided insightful observations with
participants indicated that they found the quiz useful and their per- a clear take-home message.
ception about the quiz was further explored with the help of open-

Fig. 4. (a) User count based on weekdays; and (b) percentage of new visitors and returning visitors who used the online air quality quiz.

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Fig. 5. Results of offline questionnaire showing: (a) age and gender of participants; (b) response to question if the quiz was intuitive and navigation was easy (all the
participants felt that the navigation of the quiz was easy); (c) satisfaction score for quiz button size and context of text; and (d) satisfaction score about colours, font
size and content per page.

3.3.1. Indoor PM2.5 concentration is driven by indoor activities and sparse condition, it has urban traffic from the A3 slip road at London road,
ventilation travelling towards New Inn Lame and then Merrow, with local usage
Citizen scientist #1 was interested to understand personal exposure including lorry drivers. The data was collected from 19 November 2018
in her flat during various activities over the day. The participant placed till 3 December 2018. For most of the days, the data was collected from
the sensor in her flat (Fig. S3) near the window and electric stove (Fig. morning till evening and the sensor was charged during the night time.
S4). The data were continuously collected between 13 and 23 The weather during the data collection period was mostly misty, cold
November 2018. The flat was located in a busy street near the Guildford and damp with intermittent rain showers.
city centre and was also 0.5 km from the railway station. An interesting incident on 22 November 2018 can be observed from
An interesting association was found between cooking time and Fig. 7. The participant noted that there is a sudden increase in parti-
PM2.5. The participant observed that most of the mornings when culate matter levels as compared to other days. It was found out that
cooking activities were performed, PM2.5 levels rose sharply (Fig. 6a). there was an accident on the major highway nearby. There was a huge
One reason could be lack of ventilation as the windows were closed traffic jam that resulted in high particulate concentration levels. The
during most of the time. A similar pattern between rise and decline in inflection point can be clearly observed in Fig. 7b. This citizen scientist
PM2.5 concentration was observed during the morning hours (Fig. 6b). highlighted how accidents and associated traffic jams affect the air
There was a sudden peak that was observed and subsequently, the le- quality in the surrounding neighbourhood and the time it takes for the
vels went back to normal in few hours. During some days, cooking was air quality to get back to normal.
done during late night, which can justify the high concentration after
midnight (Fig. 6a). This participant assessed how personal exposure 3.3.3. Having my home-office in the second floor is better than on the first
varies in an indoor environment and based on the results, it was learnt floor
that daily activities like cooking and cleaning can significantly affect Citizen scientist #3 usually works from home and was interested in
the indoor PM2.5 concentration. knowing where to set up the office in the house. The citizen scientist
considered three scenarios for monitoring: (i) sensor was put in the
3.3.2. Traffic jams on major highways worsen air quality in nearby room facing the road on the first floor from 13 November 2018 to 14
residential areas November 2018, (ii) sensor was put in the room facing the road on the
Citizen scientist #2 was interested in observing how traffic jams ground floor from 15 November 2018 to 20 November 2018, and (iii)
affect the air quality around houses close to a major roadway. The sensor was put in the porch in front of the house from 21 November
sensor was put in the front porch in a protective vented shelter 1.5 m 2018 morning till midnight. During the data collection period, main-
above the ground surface and around 8 m away horizontally from the tenance works were happening in a nearby area, resulting in traffic
road at Great Oaks Park (Fig. S5) in Guildford, UK. The road near the being diverted towards the road next to the house. Fig. 8a shows the
location formed a T-junction with another road. Regarding the traffic variation in the PM2.5 levels. It was observed that the exposure level is

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S. Mahajan, et al. Sustainable Cities and Society 52 (2020) 101800

Fig. 6. (a) Diurnal variation of PM2.5 during indoor air pollution monitoring by the citizen scientist #1; and (b) concentration variation of PM2.5 during the morning
cooking period. High concentrations were observed during similar time periods for days when cooking was done.

Fig. 7. (a) PM2.5 variations when the sensor is located close to the road by the citizen scientist #2; and (b) inflection point observed during a traffic incident and rise
in PM2.5 concentration during roadside traffic incident.

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S. Mahajan, et al. Sustainable Cities and Society 52 (2020) 101800

Fig. 8. (a) Concentration heat map of PM2.5 concentration when the sensor is placed on the first floor, ground floor, and in the porch outside the house by the citizen
scientist #3; and (b) Daily average PM2.5 variations at different locations in the house.

more for the room downstairs as compared to the room upstairs PM2.5 concentrations can take hours to return to normal levels without
(Fig. 8b). Also, the highest concentration levels were recorded when the sufficient ventilation.
sensor was located on the porch outside the house on 21 November
2018, owing to the close proximity to the road (Fig. 8b). Citizen sci- 4. Discussion
entist #3 highlighted that it is better to set-up office on the first floor
compared with the ground floor. It was also highlighted that such a While there are numerous citizen science studies which examined
setup was only suitable for that particular house and would not apply to citizen science approaches to address air pollution problem, most of
other dissimilar places because of the nature of citizen scientist’s house them follow the idea of designing the research problem and recruiting
location, traffic conditions and other environmental factors. the volunteers to participate only in the data gathering process (Castell
et al., 2015; Jiang et al., 2016). Conversely, our approach was based on
3.3.4. Burned food in my kitchen took hours to reach PM levels to normal three principles of inclusion, collaboration and reciprocation. We followed
Citizen scientist #4 was interested in understanding the indoor air a multi-component approach to understand public perception and raise
quality in the kitchen. A food burning incident occurred in the kitchen awareness about air pollution. To evaluate our approach, we analysed
and the citizen scientist focused on its analysis. The sensor was located the degree of participation and found out that we had participants from
inside the house near the kitchen. The data was collected from 13 different background and age groups, some with extensive knowledge
November 2018 to 25 November 2018. Most of the time, PM2.5 level of air pollution and some with basic understanding. They were not only
was low (Fig. 9a) but a sharp increase to almost 1200 μg/m3 in a couple just involved in small participatory tasks but we let the citizen scientists
of hours was noted by the participant during the evening of 18 No- decide which problem-related to air pollution they wanted to address
vember 2018 (Fig. 9b). The citizen scientist found that during this and the experiments they wanted to perform. When asked about the
evening, there was an accident in the kitchen and the food got burnt. inclusiveness of the citizen science workshops, one CS said: “Citizen
This clearly supported the sudden change in the PM2.5 levels. After science is a great way to involve local people and acts as a bridge between the
further inspection of the data during this event, the participant found academia and the community”. As feedback about the collaborative
that it took almost 12 h for the concentration level to go back to normal nature of the workshops, another CS said “An important start to under-
since the burning incident, clearly highlighting that PM2.5 concentra- standing ‘Pollution’.” The other anonymous CS mentioned about the
tions can disproportionally increase during such incidents to expose clear reciprocation throughout the workshops and quoted: “An im-
families, including most vulnerable such as young children (Sharma & portant program to bring awareness to a major problem and an insight to the
Kumar, 2018) and elderly people (Segalin, Kumar, Micadei, Fornaro, & scientific exposure evaluation method.”
Gonçalves, 2017), to harmful level of pollution. The citizen scientist We also used narrative as another evaluation method for this study
highlighted the need for sufficient ventilation in kitchens, especially the that would encourage communication and sharing of ideas between
importance of opening the windows, during food burning events, where experts and non-experts. We followed a story-telling approach in which

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Fig. 9. (a) Concentration heat map of PM2.5 for the indoor environment by the citizen scientist #4; and (b) sharp increase in the PM.2.5 concentration because of
burning food incident and time required for the concentration levels to get back to normal.

the participants explained their experience as a story and elaborated the sensors. The participants were treated as citizen scientists and were
critical points they experienced during the experiments. A number of allowed to design their study around a research question. The inter-
participants performed their experiments and came up with very in- active quiz indicated how much people know about air pollution and
teresting results: Someone found that it took hours to clear their food how people make choices in their day to day lives which affect their
burning smoke in their kitchen (emphasising ventilation as important); personal exposure to air pollution.
someone found the second floor is better than ground floor (hence the The following conclusions were drawn:
second floor is a better place for office when working from home),
someone found that traffic jam due to accident on the nearby road af- • The study helped us demonstrate that a citizen science approach can
fected air pollution around their house (reflecting clearance of jam). be considered as a viable approach to raise awareness and im-
The above case studies by citizen scientists highlighted that personal proving individual knowledge about air pollution and eventually
exposure to pollutants changes based on our day to day activities and reduce their personal exposure.
our surroundings. These studies represented varying degrees of PM • Citizen science activities can benefit from community-led air quality
concentration which were highly dependent on the context in a parti- monitoring, which could provide reliable exposure information,
cular scenario. A little awareness about the air quality and some when combined with surveys and other assessment methods such as
changes in the day to day routine habits can actually help in personal interactive quiz, and could help address important questions like
pollution exposure reduction. All the components of this study were road-side exposure assessment and indoor exposure.
mainly focused on how to engage the community members in the best • Raising awareness at the grassroots level and engaging the com-
possible way by motivating them to participate, share their problems munity to participate in air quality monitoring can generate part-
and get a first-hand experience of conducting citizen science research. nerships in which citizens and researchers can effectively work to-
The results not only helped in gaining an insight into people’s percep- wards a common goal.
tion about air quality but also raising awareness that could possibly • Open responses received from the participants’ showed that our
lead to better decision making and sustainable development. methodology promoted critical discussions and can lead to com-
munity actions to tackle air pollution.
5. Summary and conclusions
Our study demonstrated a multi-pronged citizen science approach
We investigated the perceptions of people about air quality using a with insightful findings. The participants demonstrated an improve-
citizen science approach. Our approach integrated the use of an inter- ment in their knowledge of and awareness about air pollution. Besides,
active online quiz, offline survey and low-cost air quality monitoring a bridge was built between professional scientists and the local

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community. Future work is warranted to understand how useful is the (2017). The imperial county community air monitoring network: A model for com-
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