This weekend is very important for anyone who cares about our planet and the air that we breath. MIMAQ (short for: Mobile Individual Measurements of Air Quality) will run an advanced sensor tracking project in the city of Leiden. A team of people will ride their bicycles through the city of Leiden measuring the air quality in the city centre before and during the car free Sunday. The goal of this experiment is to find out what the effects are on the air quality when cars are present and when they are not.
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Second Pilot project in Leiden this weekend.
MIMAQ ran its first pilot project during the UN climate change conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, December 2009. This weekend during the car free Sunday the MIMAQ team will measure the air quality in Leiden city centre with portable advanced gps sensors that can measure air quality. A team of people will ride their bicycles through the city of Leiden. The first measurements took place on Saturday to generate a benchmark. The next day (today) during the car free Sunday the team will ride the streets with their bicycles again to measure the air quality. The quired data will be analysed and visualized on Goolge maps and Layar augmented reality.
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About MIMAQ
Many industrialized countries have official air quality monitoring programs, funded by governmental organizations. These programs use well calibrated monitoring points, whose measurement results are extrapolated in space (neighborhoods) and time (yearly averages) in order to estimate the exposure of inhabitants to air pollution.
But what about my actual exposure during my daily commute per bike? Or my training rounds, or what if I’m working outdoors all day for my job?
MIMAQ aims at answering these questions by enabling active in monitoring by individual people by measuring air pollution during their outdoor activities.
We provide mobile environment sensors to measure the most important pollution indicators and show the results real-time in Augmented Reality, and as average values over time plotted on the map.
MIMAQ foundation is funded by Kennisland as part of the Digitale Pioniersregeling. The pilot will take place in Leiden, The Netherlands from April to October 2010.
The technological driver behind TAB Worldmedia, Johannes la Poutre is within the MIMAQ team primary responsible for translating the acquired data into tangible visual data. Johannes: "We use Layar for Augmented Reality visualization. This means that everyone with an iPhone or Android device will be able to see the air quality around them, locally in the pilot area."
Have a look at this video: