September – December 2015

Front end of development

Call for volunteers to expand the academic group of Ringland.
Ringland is a group of citizens in Belgium organising to cover one of the busiest roads in Europe, the ring road that passes close to the city center, to counter air pollution and noise.

Feasibility study.

Evaluation of design concepts.

Decision to go ahead with Palmes tubes on a massive scale.

January – April 2016

Development

Buildup of IT infrastructure, user instructions, science kit, logistics, calibration, location spread.

1 April 2016

Call for participants

Initially, 1000 citizen scientists were sought to participate in the experiment.
Public Facebook and Twitter launch of the project, picked up by local and regional news.

6 April 2016

Expansion to 2000 participants

Increase to 2000 science kits because of overwhelming demand.

15 April 2016

Selection of participants

Matching of applicants to a predefined radius around the Antwerp ring road. Optimizing location spread, filling in blind spots.

24-30 April 2016

Distribution

Multiple occasions for participants to pick up their science kit, including posters to advertise measuring locations.

30 April to 28 May 2016

Measuring period

Weekly e-mail questionnaires to participants, checking their motivation, the exact position of the experiment, etc. Helpdesk was available for reporting problems and irregularities, etc.
Participants were also asked to inform their neighbours with friendly informative postcards.

28 – 29 May 2016

Return of the samplers

Participating citizen scientists return their Palmes diffusion tubes, including the polypropylene window sign.

25 June 2016

First results

Raw data was plotted on a giant map shown at the Ringland festival.

June – October 2016

Data processing

Data processing and report writing.

28 October 2016

Final presentation

Final report of processed results and conclusions at De Roma.

Starting 28 October 2016

Window poster with results

Participants received a poster with a sticker in order to advertise the results where they were measured.

Starting 28 October 2016

Travelling maps

Seven smaller durable maps were made for citizens to present and discuss the results with their neighbourhoods or city districts.

Contact us if you want to use the printed maps for a presentation or discussion.

Download PDFs of the maps on the results page.

26 October 2016

Recycling

Pickup of ca. one ton of polypropylene window signs for recycling into furniture by Eco-oh!