xAIRE

«xAire» is a project that proposes a collective measurement of air quality in Barcelona, particularly monitoring air pollution by nitrogen dioxide (NO2), one of the most important pollutants in the city. This project brings together eighteen schools in the city of Barcelona from ten districts to install more than 800 sensors that will help to provide a more accurate mapping of air quality in the city.

xAire provides different societal outcomes such as: environmental education for participants, policy recommendations for policy-makers, and advances in the scientific knowledge on air monitoring, and citizen science. At the same time, the datas collected with the collaboration of hundreds of people is openly available for research and educational purposes and it provides insights into urban planning, environmental inequalities, and other aspects.

This project is carried out on The City Station, a pop-up environmental health clinic built in the public space that put emphasis on the collective research and public participation in science. This project is possible thanks to the sponsorship of DKV and 4sfera and to the collaboration of Mobile Week Barcelona, ISGlobal, Mapping for Change, OpenSystems, and the participation of 20 schools in Barcelona. The City Station is part of CCCB's exhibition «After the end of the world».

Updates

xAire project results published in Science of the Total Environment 14/05/2021

"Large-scale citizen science provides high-resolution nitrogen dioxide values and health impact while enhancing community knowledge and collective action" paper showing the results of the air quality collective measurements has been published at Science of The Total Environment. Summary of results here.

Pre-print xAire project results published in open access 23/10/2020

"Large-scale citizen science provides high-resolution nitrogen dioxide values and health impact while enhancing community knowledge and collective action" preprint paper showing the results of the air quality collective measurements has been published at Open Archive of Social Science.

Collective experiment, Festa de la ciència 09/06/2018

Collective experiment at the "Festa de la Ciència" aimed to understand how we behave and cooperate to tackle collective risk impacts, such as air pollution and its effects. This experiment was performed using the data collected in the xAire project.

Reception at the Barcelona city council 26/04/2018

Reception of the schools participating in the xAire project at the Saló de Cent of the Barcelona City Council. The students presented the results of this project, in which they collaboratively measured the air quality in their daily context, to the policy-makers. In addition to students and teachers, the event was attended by the scientific team and the Deputy Mayor, Janet Sanz, and the Ecology Commissioner, Frederic Ximeno.

Collective Experiment, CCCB 23/04/2018

Collective experiment, at the "Pati de les dondes" (CCCB) in the context of the "After the End of the World" exhibition, aimed to understand how we behave and cooperate to tackle collective risk impacts, such as air pollution and its effects. This experiment was performed using the data collected in the xAire project.