Making Sense of Urban Air

RQ: The project seeks to explore how the introduction of Google’s Project Air View as a technological mediation and representation of polluting particles contributes to smart urban planning in the city of Copenhagen.

Background: In October 2018 the Municipality of Copenhagen launched a new collaboration with Google’s air pollution project called ‘Project Air View’. Project Air View aims to measure air pollution in all streets of the capital in contrast to the current air pollution approach which relies on three stationary measuring stations that provide data shrouded in uncertainties due to their proximity to streets and pollution sources (Zander 2018). On a national level air pollution legibility relies upon mathematical modelling that is relatively inaccurate, coarse-grained and which should only be used for rough guiding purposes (National Centre for Environment and Energy 2018). Using geolocation and advanced scientific tools, the Google cars have been reconstructed as mobile scientific laboratories that measure the amount of ultra-fine air pollution particles and CO2 emissions with high precision directly on the roads (Ranhauge 2018). Google has been testing this new technology in Oakland, California, since 2015 and early results have shown that the levels of harmful pollutants can be up to eight times higher at one end of a street compared to the other end (Peters 2018). This clear improvement nonetheless opens up for many other questions. Most pertinently: how are these data going to be used and what vision of the city do they entail? A fine-grained vision and map of city particles necessarily points to specific sources of pollution/emission, which raises political and economic controversies of value (of accountability, cost-benefit, infrastructure, city planning etc.) pertaining to these sources (are they from industry, transport, harbor, wood stoves in kolonihaver?). In other words, how is this information about particles interpreted? How is this information validated in relation to other indicators of how a city ‘performs’ (as climate-friendly, as a tech-hub etc.)? Of current debates, the project furthermore speaks to discussions within IoT, ‘big’ data and smart urban planning.
The main part of the research will be carried out by a named PhD student, and it will strategically strengthen a growing collaborative relationship between the MOSPUS (mobility and urban studies) research group at RUC, and the Technologies in Practice research group at the ITU.