AiREAS enhances its network of AirBoxes in Eindhoven with the monitoring of traffic emissions

Petten/Eindhoven, 15 december 2014 – The network of AirBoxes with which air pollution is measured in the city of Eindhoven (Netherlands) has today been enhanced with NO2 sensors. As from now, together with fine dust and ozon, also nitrogen dioxide will be measured, a substance that is mainly emitted by traffic.

Since end 2013 Eindhoven counts 35 AirBoxen spread throughout town, measuring fine dust in different sizes (from 10 micrometer to as small as 1 micrometer) as well as concentrations of ozon. The measurements are being executed by newly developed sensors. This Innovative Air Measurement system (ILM) is co-created by the multidisciplinary cooperation AiREAS, in which, among others the local city government, the province of North-Brabant, enterprises like Philips, Imagelabonline and Imtech ICT, universities of Utrecht and Twente, the Academic Medical Centre and Energy research Centre Netherlands (ECN) participate. ECN is responsible for the development of the sensors. The design and development of a low cost but reliable and validated NO2 sensor encountered a lot of struggles but ECN managed to overcome them and created a sensor that delivers quality information. This NO2-sensor is now installed in 5 AirBoxes across the city.

Healthy city a bit closer
AiREAS wants to co-create a healthy city involving citizens and institutions together. It is important to now exactly where which concentrations of pollution occur. “When you consider the norms set for air pollution we do not perform at all that bad in the Netherlands. On national level we do well, despite some problem areas. The purpose of AiREAS however is to look beyond norms and create a healthy city. For this the situation needs to be looked at with much more precision”, explains air quaity expert Ernie Weijers of ECN. “Now that we have all components working we have a network that provides us with excellent local insight.”

With the information the local governments can take measures and do research on the effects on health, or adapt the traffic management. The data are publically available via aireas.com, allowing civilians and business enterprises to also contribute to the improvement of their living space.

According Weijers other cities can benefit from the experiences in Eindhoven. “The interest in other communities is large and we expect to expand into other cities soon.”

For more information:
For more information on the sensor technology you can contact with Bas van Bree, Environment & Energy Engineering  ECN, Tel: +31 88 5154427,Mob: +31 6 22711515, e-mail: vanbree@ecn.nl

For information on co-creating a healthy city with the AiREAS format you can contact Jean-Paul Close, Email:  jpclose@aireas.com