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Exploring Melbourne’s localised pollution levels…

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As part of an ongoing activity in the Clean Air and Urban Landscapes project, I am currently exploring the use of mobile pollution detectors (Airbeams). These devices can capture details on fine particulate matter (PM2.5 microns). The air quality of Melbourne is fine (and yesterday was an exception to the rule as it was a muggy day) but as seen pollution can build up near the CBD. We are combining these data sets with data from the official sources of pollution data (through work on the AURIN data, e.g. VicRoads, EPA, NPI, …) as well as benchmarking the devices with the official (expensive, accurate but static (non-mobile)) sources of information. Plans are to explore getting some citizen science activities going in this area and have many tens, hundreds of individuals across Melbourne feeding their pollution data into the platform. What is the impact of such pollution on health, trees, frogs, …?

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