Open Seneca’s air quality monitors in Quito
On September 7, 2020, the United Nations General Assembly declared the International Day of Clean Air for blue skies. Honoring this day on its second anniversary, the Environmental Fund from the Municipality of Quito received 20 Air Quality monitors donated by Open Seneca. This donation was possible thanks to the Urban Pathways project developed by the Wuppertal Institute, UN-Habitat and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and funded by the International Climate Protection Initiative (IKI) of the German Ministry of the Environment.
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Urban Pathways aims to generate the AirQuality Decision Support System (DSS) implemented by the Helsinki University that will assess public policy trough the simulation of traffic patterns and creation of an emissions inventory to model and forecast air quality. To achieve this goal, they will work with the data provided by Open-Seneca’s low-cost air quality monitors.
The devices were given to a network of volunteer’s urban cyclists in Quito with the support of the E-Cargo Bike UIO consortium, an alliance of different companies focused on the promotion of sustainable mobility. This consortium is also assembling 10 electric cargo-bikes for the SOLUTIONSplus project that seeks to implement electric mobility pilots in the Historic Center of Quito in order to consolidate the Low Emissions Zone. The plan for the near future is to install the air quality monitors on these bikes.
The volunteers will collect data about air pollution by PM2.5 for two months. This information will help to update the inventory of emissions from mobile sources by collecting data on public roads. Afterwards, the information will be contrasted and verified with data collected from the Quito Metropolitan Network of Atmospheric Monitoring (REMMAQ) from the Environment Secretariat of the Municipality of Quito. Finally, the data obtained will serve to build statistical analysis and modelling emissions scenarios with the cooperation of the Centre for Mathematical Modelling (ModeMat) from the National Polytechnic School (EPN).
The devices were given to a network of volunteer’s urban cyclists in Quito with the support of the E-Cargo Bike UIO consortium, an alliance of different companies focused on the promotion of sustainable mobility. This consortium is also assembling 10 electric cargo-bikes for the SOLUTIONSplus project that seeks to implement electric mobility pilots in the Historic Center of Quito in order to consolidate the Low Emissions Zone. The plan for the near future is to install the air quality monitors on these bikes.
The volunteers will collect data about air pollution by PM2.5 for two months. This information will help to update the inventory of emissions from mobile sources by collecting data on public roads. Afterwards, the information will be contrasted and verified with data collected from the Quito Metropolitan Network of Atmospheric Monitoring (REMMAQ) from the Environment Secretariat of the Municipality of Quito. Finally, the data obtained will serve to build statistical analysis and modelling emissions scenarios with the cooperation of the Centre for Mathematical Modelling (ModeMat) from the National Polytechnic School (EPN).
The University of Helsinki and the Finnish Meteorological Institute have continued working on the AQ model for Quito beyond the end of the project due to the high-quality data available from local sources. On one hand, the Municipality of Quito provided the AQ data collected on a daily basis by the reference stations throughout the city. On the other hand, the National Polytechnic School (EPN) shared the data of the meteorological models that they've developed and that are being updated on a daily basis. These two data sets, together with the open-seneca data, helped UoH and FMI improve the AQ model for Quito significantly. Thus, the next steps will be to publish a joint research paper (UoH, FMI, open seneca, EPN and Municipality) in a high-level journal. FMI and UoH also expressed their interest to continue collaborating with Quito in the future.
