CurieuzeNeuzen: monitoring air quality together with 20.000 citizens

Traffic sources contribute a large portion of the ambient nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter and ozone concentrations, the three ambient air pollutants with the largest impact on human health in Europe (EEA, 2018). High spatial resolution air quality data capturing the high spatial variability of this traffic related pollution are necessary in order to inform policy. The approach of environmental protection agencies around the world to measure using expensive monitoring stations allows monitoring in high temporal, but not spatial, resolution (Snyder et al., 2013). Air quality models are used to achieve the necessary spatial resolution, but their full validation still requires a dense measurement set.  
To obtain such a set for the traffic dense region of Flanders, Belgium, an unusual consortium, uniting the University of Antwerp, the Flanders Environment Agency, and the newspaper De Standaard as main partners, collaborated with citizens in the CurieuzeNeuzen project (CurieuzeNeuzen Vlaanderen, 2019). The involvement of citizens allowed to raise community awareness regarding air quality, and support for related research and measures.