The Office of Environment ask for an explanation about the new location of the stations.

The Office of Environment requests the Madrid City Council for an explanation about the new location of the monitoring stations of air pollutants in the city.

The Office of Environment thinks that instead of solving the causes of high pollution levels, the City Council is eliminating some of the monitoring stations, which does not mean that the problem has been resolved but lead to think that has been hidden.

Click here for more information: article published in the local newspaper ADN.

Reference sent by Raquel Osa Fernández.

at Processing.org

In the air was published at Processing´s Exhibition page. Thanks to Casey Reas for the invitation!
And thanks to the coders and to Toxi for some of his lines.

NUEVO SISTEMA INFORMÁTICO

Se desarrolla un nuevo sistema informático para controlar y prevenir la contaminación atmosférica. Ha sido realizado en la Facultad de Informática de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid como parte de la tesis doctoral del alumno Juan Luis Pérez Camaño, dirigida por el profesor Roberto San José, director del Grupo de Modelos y Software para el Medio Ambiente (GMSMA) de la Facultad.

Publicación de la noticia en la plataforma SINC:

"Un sistema informático que permite de forma robusta y eficiente el control y la previsión de la contaminación atmosférica, ha sido desarrollado en la Facultad de Informática de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (FIUPM), según informa esta Facultad en un comunicado.
El sistema informático tiene capacidad para realizar predicciones de calidad del aire en tiempo real y para analizar el impacto de las diversas fuentes emisoras, tanto estáticas como dinámicas, en modo operacional, por lo que da respuesta al interés de las autoridades ambientales por reducir los problemas de calidad del aire.
La calidad del aire en un territorio determinado viene dada por la distribución geográfica de las fuentes de emisión, las cantidades de contaminantes emitidas, los procesos físico-químicos que se producen en la atmósfera y la climatología y la orografía, que condicionan los procesos de dispersión y transporte.
El sistema desarrollado en la FIUPM integra modelos complejos de modelización atmosférica, perfectamente adaptados a la complejidad y no linealidad de los procesos que tienen lugar en una atmósfera, que es totalmente dinámica."

Referencia enviada por Nerea García Garmendia.

SPATRAM

Figure: SPATRAM (Spectrometer for Atmospheric TRAcers Monitoring) installed since April 2004 at the University of Evora , Portugal.


Since 1999, DTA is involved in the development of new remote-sensing equipment, in particular Uv-Vis Spectrometers (Figure), devoted to the monitoring of atmospheric compounds (specifically, gaseous compounds as Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), Ozone (O3) in the Stratosphere and in “passive mode” (meaning that the source of radiation is the Sun). The spectrometers used in “Active Mode” (the source of radiation is artificial – i.e. Halogen Lamps) can also perform measurements of tropospheric pollutants as BTX, Sulphur Dioxide (SO2) and again NO2 and O3.

Reference sent by André Albuquerque.

RatTales

RateTales is an installation with a large floor projection and camera tracking system, creating a space for interaction among people and a computer-generated swarm of rats. Every rat as well as each visitor has a tail made of letters displaying various quotes about rats. The rats will flee from visitors but attack them from behind. With his rat-tail the individual joins a race, he may perceive as a disgust and a threat.

It is a project of TheGreenEyl

Reference sent by Irma Földényi.

Cambridge Mobile Urban Sensing

CamMobSens is a project of Cambridge University, where they mount sensors on pedestrians and cyclists to monitor pollution and send back the information to a website as soon as it is gathered. In the figure above taken from their web page, pollution levels are proxied by the height of the plots.

Más información aquí.

Reference sent by Susanna Tesconi.

Visualizar 09: Public data, data in public

In the air has been selected as invited project to Visualizar 09 at Medialab-Prado, workshop directed by Jose Luis de Vicente, with Ben Cerveny from Stamen, Aaron Koblin and Manuel Lima as tutors and with the support of Bestiario.

We have developed the application in two aspects:

-we have added a timeline, which allows to navigate through the data by hour, day and month.
-we have studied the archived data to find patterns of behaviour of the components, relating them to the activities of the city. We have added tags which pop up through time, allowing the user to read the stories behind the data.

We have developed as well an application for the digital facade, which consists on a changing heatmap with the location of all stations.


Collaborators of Visualizar 09: Paolo Battino y Velentina Basotti (informational architecture), Raquel Osa, Martina Fernández Ramos y Guillermo San Miguel (contents), Martín Nadal (code development), and Francisco Martín (technical assistant).