This paper is aimed at developing a new service in order to address the issues of excessive pollution in Shanghai though customer involvement.
The incidence of high levels of air pollutants on the everyday life of Shanghai citizens has become an unbearable pressing problem. The increasingly better living conditions and standards among Chinese population, has contributed to the growth of awareness on the issue, which has started to directly affect the choices made on a day to day basis.
In order to develop an effective and innovative service, a prelimi-nary research has been carried out to identify the existing services available that aim at reducing the pollutants levels in Shanghai, together with a comprehensive research on the pollution effects and health impacts and existing publications and studies have been researched. Secondly, a survey has been conducted in order to actually understand the actual impacts of pollution levels on the everyday life of the respondents; parallel face to face inter-view were utilize to understand the level of interest in the service among possible stakeholders. Thirdly, based upon the informa-tion collected in the former steps, the service has been thought and developed, after a choice of a specific existing technology which is not yet available in China.
The final output of this research is a service that allows a data collection network from sensors provided to the customers of said service, generally shops and restaurants, positioned around the city. According to the data collected by said sensors, a device equipped with air filtering technology, moves around the city in order to reach the most critical areas and filter the air rendering it pollutant free. In this way citizens, though the use of an appli-cation, are able to make an aware decision on their outdoor daily activities.
Keywords: Air Pollution, Air quality Data collection, Data
Crowd-sourcing, Citizens’ behaviors.
INDEX
1
2
1.1 Scenario // p.8 1.2 Abbreviations // p.11 1.3 Tools // p.11
INTRODUCTION
AIR POLLUTION
2.1 General introduction about air pollution // p.12 2.2 Impact of pollution on human health // p.13 2.3 Overview of pollution in China // p.15 2.4 Emission of pollutants in China // p.16 2.5 Impact of pollution between cities // p.17 2.6 The cost of pollution // p.18
2.7 How Chinese people react to it pollution // p.20 2.8 How citizens have to change their behaviors in order to avoid Air Pollution Exposure // p.22
2.9 Impact of Air Pollution on media // p.26
2.10 Main issue in air pollution prevent and control // p.28
2.11 12th five-year plan principle // p.29 2.12 12th five-year plan objectives // p.30
4
4.1 introduction // p.58 4.2 the company // p.58 4.3 Scientific Study // p.59 4.4 Depurcity Concept // p.64 4.5 Opportunity // p.66DEPURCITY
5
5.1 Introduction // p.68 5.2 Survey // p.70 5.3 Interview // p.74QUESTIONS
3
2.13 12th five-year plan prevention plan // p.30 2.14 other strategies of the 12th five-year plan // p.34
2.15 Research Key Findings // p.35
EXISTING SOLUTIONS
3.1 Shanghai car plate control // p.36 3.2 Bike sharing shanghai // p.38 3.3 Area C Milano // p.40
3.4 track air pollution with a smartphone // p.42 3.5 air casting // p.44
3.6 aqicn.org // p.46 3.7 Air quality china // p.48 3.8 Changers // p.50
3.9 IBM green horizon project // p.52 3.10 Existing solutions key findings // p.54
6
6.1 Name // p.78 6.2 Concept // p.78
6.2 BREATH structure // p.79 6.3 BREATH stakeholders // p.80 6.4 BREATH offering map // p.83 6.5 BREATH personas // p.84 6.6 Business model Analysis // p.86 6.7 BREATH Business model // p.101
6.8 Why BREATH needs datas in order to work // p.103
6.9 BREATH Touchpoints // p.104 6.10 BREATH User Journey // p.121 6.11 BREATH Strategy // p.124
6.12 BREATH Preliminary Assessment Costs // p.125
BREATH
7
Conclusions // p.128 Aknowledgment Bibliography LinkographyCONCLUSIONS
1/INTRODUCTION
1.1 Scenario
Smarter cities of all sizes are capitalizing on new technologies and insights to transform their systems, operations and service deliv-ery.
Competition among cities to engage and attract new residents, businesses and visitors means constant attention to providing a high quality of life and vibrant economic climate. Forward-think-ing leaders recognize that although tight budgets, scarce resources and legacy systems frequently challenge their goals, new and in-novative technologies can help turn challenges into opportunities. These leaders see transformative possibilities in using big data and analytics for deeper insights. Cloud for collaboration among dispa-rate agencies.
problems directly at the source. Social technologies for better en-gagement with citizens. Being smarter can change the way their cities work and help deliver on their potential as never before. In a smart city is no longer possible to let the citizens live in a bad environment. Our culture is developing and we start to see some-thing that can go far beyond the amount of money we can earn during a lifetime. The Economy is switching to a more sustainable model where we think of ourself and the next generations. With this mindset the situation of the Air quality in some cities, espe-cially in Asia, is no longer acceptable. Something must change, the PM10, PM2.5 and the smaller PMs are literarily killing us, our fami-lies, our friends, our children, from inside.
It’s a silent enemy, we cannot really see it, but is there every day in every moment, every breath we take we inhale some of this deadly particulate.
The governments started to work on this big problem since some years but still seams that Air Pollution is still not considered as se-rious as it is.
But as said before, things are changing in every field, the single person is becoming more and more powerful and the technology revolution, the big data, the internet of things, are tools that can help to start to solve all kind of problems from a different point of view. For long time big issue were addressed by the government, the single person was not enough powerful to do anything, today design can give a meaning to the new tools that the technology is providing us, and thanks to those, design can give power to a single person to change things.
This thesis will discuss the possibility to create a product service system that involves a community of shops and citizens in the city of Shanghai (as case study) in order to actively tackle Air Pollution in the City through the use of movable air filtration and the big data informations mined by the shops of the city. This Pss is not the final solution to the Air Pollution problem, this Pss should be one of the nodes of a huge net of small solutions created with a bottom up approach in order to give to citizens the possibility to act and to be affective even though the problem seems to be too big for a single person.
This Pss has been developed through a double diamond process. From an initial literature reviews of new polices, case studies and behaviors related to Air Pollution reduction several insight and re-quirements emerged. These allowed to develop hypothesis and ideas that have been tested throughout surveys and interviews. This provide the theoretical background of insight, requirements, feedback and result that have been considered for the
develop-ment of a new PSS based on the active engagedevelop-ment of citizen that, through technology can help in Air pollution reduction.
Dissertation structure
This thesis is divided in six main chapters. The next chapter provide an introduction about Air Pollution, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 ana-lyze existing solution and case studies aimed to reduce air pollution. Chapter 5 details design decisions and the concept idea of Breath. The conclusions in Chapter six discuss the main achievements of the project and areas of further investigations.
1.2 abbreviations
PSS: Product Service System WHO: World Health Organization VOC: Volatile organic compounds USP: Unique Selling Points
CNR: Italian national research center AQI: Air Quality Index
1.3 Tools
In order to conduct a meaningful and complete project, the tools used in order to get useful informations are:
Desk research: regarding the dimension of the Air pollution problem today, in the world and in China, how it affects health and behaviors of citizens;
the state of the art of possible solution and case studies in order to address the Air Pollution problem.
Survey: gather informations about citizens of Shanghai about their daily behavior related to Air Pollution, and in particular regarding their perception of Pollution.
Interviews: face to face interview were made in order to understand the level of interest in the service among possible stakeholders. Service Design tools: such as offering map, system maps, user jour-ney map, personas. Those tools will be used in order to explain all the component of the PSS.
Air pollution is almost invisible but is one of the biggest environ-mental problems and is among the critical challenges facing mod-ern societies. Air pollution is responsible for major harmful effects on human health, animal lives, natural ecosystems and the man-made environment.
Air pollution can also affect future generations because is one of the biggest responsible for climate change enhancing greenhouse effect, acid rain, and the depletion of the ozone layer. Air quality degradation because of air pollution is considered a global problem and threatens humanity’s wellbeing, for this reason it is associated with environmental injustice.
It is possible to define Air pollution as the release of several sub-stances into the atmosphere, in an amount that can threat the health of living organisms or disturb the function of the environ-ment as a system leading to human health damages in various ways.
Air pollutants can be gas, solid particles, or liquid. They can be the result of the production of natural processes or human activities. The natural sources of air pollutants include volcanic activity, forest fires, organic decay or soil dispersion into the air by the wind and those pollutants creates the basic level of pollution that is perfectly natural and can be absorbed by the environment. The main pollut-ants released in the atmosphere related to human activity come from transportation, burning coal or other fossil fuels in order to satisfy the electric energy demands, industrial processes, use of chemicals in agriculture and process, facilities like power plants, in-cinerators, landfills for waste deposition.
“The major outdoor air pollutants produced by human activities in-clude, among others
• Carbon oxides, especially carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon diox-ide (CO2) produced by the transportation sector (motor vehicle ex-haust) and combustion of fossil fuels;
• Nitrogen oxides, especially nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emitted from hightemperature fossil fuel combustion and electricity production; • Sulphur oxides, produced in various industrial processes such the smelting of sulphur-bearing ores for extracting metals and electric-ity production;
• Volatile organic compounds (hydrocarbons, VOCs) that include a variety of substances released from power plants and from indus-tries producing
numerous products such as painting colours, cleaning products,
2/AIR POLLUTION
pesticides, building materials, and furniture;
• Particulate matter (PM), that is solid or liquid air pollutants mainly emitted by power plants and the transportation sector (aircrafts, motor vehicles), mining, and incinerators;
• Ground level ozone (O3), an air pollutant that results from pho-tochemical reactions between nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the presence of sunlight;
• Toxic metals particularly lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd) and cooper (Cu) that are emitted from the transportation sector (motor vehicle ex-haust), as well as from industrial procedures (production of paint-ing colours, minpaint-ing processes).
Increasing population in urban areas results in increasing demands in transportation, industrial production and energy, which consti-tute the main sources of outdoor air pollution. Moreover, this prob-lem is intensified due to inadequate green open spaces in towns and cities and their restricted possibility to improve air quality and reduce air pollution”. (Dimitriou, Christidou, 2011)
The World Health Organization (WHO) released, in 2013, a study re-garding the impact of PM on human health, proving that the con-stant exposure to PM pollutants is the cause of different diseases and inabilities and reduces the life expectancy.
The study says that PM10 and PM2.5 include breathable particles that are small enough to penetrate the thoracic region of the respi-ratory system. The health effects of breathable PM are well known, they are due to exposure over both the short term (hours, days) and long term (months, years) and include:
respiratory and cardiovascular morbidity, such as aggravation of asthma, respiratory symptoms and an increase in hospital admis-sions, mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and from lung cancer.
The study shows that there are good evidence of the effects of short-term exposure to PM10 on respiratory health, but for mortali-ty, and especially as a consequence of long-term exposure, PM2.5 is a stronger risk factor than the coarse part of PM10, “daily mortality is estimated to increase by 0.2–0.6% per 10 μg/m3 of PM10. Long-term exposure to PM2.5 is associated with an increase in the long-term risk of cardiopulmonary mortality by 6–13% per 10 μg/m3 of PM2.5 (8–10)” (WHO, 2013).
Particularly vulnerable are the susceptible groups with pre-existing
lung or heart disease, as well as elderly people and children. The ex-position to PM affects the natural development of lung in children, it also include reversible deficits in lung function and chronically reduced lung growth rate and a deficit in long-term lung function. “There is no evidence of a safe level of exposure or a threshold be-low which no adverse health effects occur. The exposure is ubiqui-tous and involuntary, increasing the significance of this determi-nant of health.” (WHO, 2013)
Today, at the population level, is difficult to identify differences in the effects of particles with different chemical components or ex-hausted from various sources because there is a lack of evidence. Should be noted that the evidence for the hazardous nature of com-bustion-related PM is more consistent than that for PM from other sources. In PM2.5 the black carbon, that is the results of incomplete combustion, focused the attention of the air quality scientific com-munity due to the evidence for its contribution to bad effects on health as well as on environment. Some PM components that are attached to black carbon particles are now studied in order to un-derstand if they can be seen as responsible for health effects. For instance organics such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon that are known carcinogens and directly toxic to the cells, as well as met-als and inorganic salts. In 2013, the exhaust from diesel engines (consisting mostly of particles) was classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as carcinogenic to humans.
“It is estimated that approximately 3% of cardiopulmonary and 5% of lung cancer deaths are attributable to PM globally.
This proportion is 1–3% and 2–5%, respectively, in various subre-gions. Results emerging from a recent study indicate that the bur-den of disease related to ambient air pollution may be even higher. The study estimates that in 2010, ambient air pollution, as annual PM2.5, accounted for 3.1 million deaths and around 3.1% of glob-al disability-adjusted life years. Exposure to PM2.5 reduces the life expectancy of the population by about 8.6 months on aver-age. Results from the scientific project Improving Knowledge and Communication for Decision-making on Air Pollution and Health, which uses traditional health impact assessment methods, indi-cate that average life expectancy in the most polluted cities could be increased by approximately 20 months if the long-term PM2.5 concentration was reduced to the WHO air quality guidelines annu-al level.” (WHO, 2013)
2.3 Overview Of Pollution In China
China has faced a fast development of the industrial sector that brought this country to become the leader of production of goods in the world so that is considered the factory of other countries. For almost 20 years china developed its industry thinking more to increasing of the wellness of population without thinking too much to the sustainability side and using as much as possible the en-vironment. Nevertheless China’s air pollution has by now reached an extremely critical state and the government started to take in account the environment considering it as a value and not only as a resource. For instance air pollutants like ozone, PM2.5 and acid rain, are growing more serious and frequent to form regional compound air pollution. Simultaneous large-scale severe air pollution episodes in many regions have been rising. This significantly put a constraint on the sustainable development of Chinese society and economy, in the same time it threaten public health. The regional air pollution is giving huge challenges to the environmental management system. For sure is very difficult or may be impossible to stop the growing of air pollution just through traditional management.
Air quality management efforts (for instance the Beijing Olympics, the Shanghai Expo and the Guangzhou Asia Games) has proved how the collaboration of regional air pollution prevention and con-trol are effective approach in improving air quality internationally and in regional air quality management. It is necessary to explore and establish new regional air pollution prevention and control management system, which requires an integrated system plan-ning across the whole country.
Today China is hardly working in order to prevent the production of a huge amount of pollutants in future, in order to do so, On December 5, 2012, Ministry of Environmental Protection, National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued “12th Five-Year Plan on Air Pollution Prevention and Control in Key Regions”. And the plan has being approved by the China’s State Council earlier. “The 12th Five-Year period will see rap-id industrialization and urbanization across China. The consump-tion of resources and energy will continue to rise and air quality will be threatened by air pollution. Clean use of energy and clean energy production will be advanced. Multiple pollutants control measures will be implemented and emissions will be reduced. A total of 19 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities are involved, covering a combined area of approximately 1,325,600 square kilometers or 13.81% of the nation’s land area. The plan
en-compasses the regions of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Del-ta, Pearl River DelDel-ta, as well as the city clusters of Central Liaoning, Shandong Province, Wuhan region, Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan, Chengdu-Chongqing, Straits Fujian, Central and Northern Shanxi, Shaanxi Guanzhong, Gansu-Ningxia, and the city of Urumqi in Xin-jiang.” (Lijian, 2013)
2.4 Emissions of pollutants in China
As written in the 12th Five-Year Plan on Air Pollution Prevention and Control in Key Regions, China’s emission of SO2 and NOx are the highest in the world. China emitted 22.678 million tons of SO2and 22.736 million tons of NOx in 2010, with dust emissions of 14.661 million tons, which are all far beyond the environmental carrying
capacity. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl Riv-er Delta regions, as well as the city clustRiv-ers of Central Liaoning, Shandong Province, Wuhan region, Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan, Chengdu-Chongqing, Straits Fujian, Central and Northern Shanxi, Shaanxi Guanzhong, Gansu-Ningxia, and Urumqi in Xinjiang are the thirteen key regions that have high centralized area of economic activity, pollution emissions, and prominent ambient air problem. These key regions accounts for 14% of the total land area, 48% of the total population, produce 71% of the total GDP, consume 52% of the coal, discharge 48% of SO2, 51% of NOx, 42% of dust and 50% of VOCs.
The emission of main pollutants in key region in 2010 (10,000 tons)
2.5 Impact of pollution between Cities
The Chinese urban environment continues to expand and develop, this is the reason why atmospheric circulation causes the pollution interaction and transmission between cities to become more and more prominent. “In the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze Delta, and Pearl River Delta regions, 30-40% of SO2, 12-20% of NOx, and 16-26% of PM10 come from the outside sources” (Lijian, 2013). The weather conditions affects a lot the Changes in regional urban air pollution and heavy pollution weather successively appeared in general a day.
This affect a lot also the behaviors of the citizens and the expats in China. Is getting more and more difficult to live in such polluted cities, and also who is living in those cities still changes a lot his way of living the city.
Sports are played indoor and sometimes going out is a hard choice to take. This theme will be discuss further in the following chapters.
2.6 The Costs Of Air Pollution
If the proof regarding impact on human health would not be suffi-cient to think about a possible solution, is possible to see the same problem from a different angle, less interesting for the single per-son but sadly important for a complex system as a state is.
The disease caused by PM are a real cost for the community espe-cially in china because of the extremely high amount of pollution. A Study regarding the cost assessment of Air pollution in China has been done by GreenPeace 2012, According to statistics from Chi-na’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and it was the first of its kind, based on currently available research findings and data in re-lation to PM2.5 in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xi’an and Beijing, respec-tively elected as four major cities in Eastern, Southern, Western, and Northern China. The study is focused on the health risks and economic loss linked to PM2.5 in these four cities, and assesses the potential public health and economic benefits given effective improvement of PM2.5 pollution control under different scenarios. Due to a lack of available data, the hospital admission number and loss of work and school days were not included although PM2.5 would have also impacted this numbers. The paper is focused on the health and economic loss brought upon by premature death.
“Based on the exposure response relationship coefficient values in different cities, was able calculated figures for related deaths in 2010 and economic loss based on population and PM2.5 concentra-tion numbers.
To calculate the number of residents in 2010 exposed to PM2.5 air pollution, were used statistics from the population of permanent residents in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xi’an. The PM2.5 data used is calculated from annual environment communiqués
published by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), with PM10 converted to PM2.5 concentration numbers using a factor of 0.60.
Based on the demographic changes of the four cities in 2012, was also calculated the deaths and economic loss caused by different levels of PM2.5 in 2012.” (Greenpeace, 2012)
In 2014 Shiliang Wang, Michael J. Paul and Mark Dredze of the Johns Hopkins University made a study investigating the utility of Chi-nese social media for monitoring air quality trends and related pub-lic perceptions and response.
They mine a collection of 93 million messages from Sina Weibo, China’s largest microblogging service. With those data they exper-imented with different filters to identify messages relevant to air quality, based on keyword matching and topic modeling. In the end they evaluate the reliability of the data filters by comparing mes-sage volume per city to air particle pollution rates obtained from the Chinese government for 74 cities. Additionally, they perform a qualitative study of the content of pollution-related messages by coding a sample of 170 messages for relevance to air quality, and whether the message includes details such as a reactive behavior or a health concern.
2.7 How Chinese People React To Air Pollution
The study analyses 170 messages from the Air Quality topic, which had the highest correlation of the two topics. Specific keywords was not filtered in order to get a broader set of messages.
Was found that “114 (67.1%) messages sampled through this filter were actually relevant to air quality or air pollution. Of those 114 messages, 90 indicated a first-hand experience (79.0%). Of those 90 messages, 32 (35.6%) mentioned a reactive behavior, and 17 (18.9%) expressed a concern for the user’s health. Three (2.6%) out of 114 relevant messages requested that action by taken to improve the air quality. One message declared a need to reduce carbon emis-sions, while the other two more
generally called for cleaner air (one was directed at the govern-ment).
while other behaviors include washing clothes and staying indoors.” (Wang, et al., 2014)
Of the 17 messages expressing a health concern, five reported a cough, three reported a sore throat, and two reported dry or peel-ing skin. Various health conditions were also reported: rhinitis (four messages), allergic rhinitis (one), pharyngitis (one), and asthma (one).
Is possible to recognize a common pattern in answers, in first-hand messages that did not belong to the more specific categories (reac-tive behavior or health concern) is the expression of emotions such as anger or sadness; however, the study do not quantify this char-acteristic because of the difficulty to define concretely.
When the pollution is very high and consequently also during other days, the Air Pollution deeply affect the behaviors of thousands of citizens that suddenly realize that pollution is tangible and can re-ally affect human health.
Of course the more a person moves and breaths the worse is, it means that during those days the experts encourage not to go out, and low down the level of activities you have to do.
For instance this is what the embassy of the United States of America encourage to do:
“Stay indoors in an area with filtered air. Particle pollution can get indoors, so consider purchasing an air cleaner if you live in an area with high levels of particle pollution.
Air cleaners that remove particles include high-efficiency mechan-ical filters and electronic air cleaners, such as electrostatic precipi-tators. Avoid using an air cleaner that works by generating ozone, which will increase the pollution in your home.If you do not have air cleaners in your home, try to go somewhere that does have air filtration. This could, for example, be a friend’s home, if it has air
2.8 How citizens have to change their behaviors in order to avoid
Air Pollution Exposure
filtration.
Keep your activity levels low. Avoid activities that make you breathe faster or more deeply. This is a good day for indoor activities, such as reading or watching TV.
If you cannot buy filters for your entire home, create a clean room for sleeping.
A good choice is a room with as few windows and doors as possible, such as a bedroom.
If the room has windows, keep them closed.
Run an air conditioner or central air conditioning system if you are certain your air conditioner does not draw air from outdoors and has a filter. If the air conditioner provides a fresh air option, keep the fresh-air intake closed. Make sure that the filter is clean enough to allow good air flow indoors.
Use an air filter in that room. Avoid using an air cleaner that works by generating ozone, those types of cleaners will increase the pol-lution in your home.
Follow steps for keeping pollution in your home low. Take additional steps to keep pollution in your home low.
Air cleaners alone may not be enough because particle pollution from the outdoor air can easily get inside, take steps to avoid add-ing even more pollution indoors when outdoor PM2.5 levels are high: avoid using anything that burns, such as wood fireplaces, gas logs and even candles or incense.
Keep the room clean but don’t vacuum unless your vacuum has a filter. That stirs up particles already inside your home. Wet mop-ping can help reduce dust.
Don’t smoke.
Be cautious when the weather is hot. If it is too hot to stay inside with the windows closed, or if you are in an at-risk group, go some-where else with filtered air.
When air quality improves, open the windows and air out your home or office” (U.S. Embassy)
Also the Local authorities often warn the population for instance “in 2013 Shanghai Officials Tell Children, Elderly to Stay Inside Due to Smog several times”. (Stout, 2013)
Sports class more and more often take place beneath a gigantic inflatable dome to reduce the exposure of children to Air Pollution: “It’s a bit of a change having to go through an airlock on the way to class but the kids love it, and parents can now rest assured their children are playing in a safe environment” says Travis Washko, di-rector of sports at the British School of Beijing.
China’s air quality has long been a cause of concern, but the ef-fects of its extreme levels of pollution on daily life can now be seen
in physical changes to the architecture of the city. Buildings and spaces are being reconfigured and daily routines modified to allow normal life to go on beneath the toxic shroud.
Paper face masks have been common here for a long time, but now the heavy-duty kind with purifying canister filters are frequently seen on the streets.
On bad days, bike lanes are completely deserted, as people stay at home or retreat to the conditioned environments of hermetically sealed malls.
As written in the the article: Inside Beijing’s airpocalypse published by the Guardian in 2014, the British School is the latest of Beijing’s international colleges to go to the drastic lengths of building an ar-tificial bubble in which to simulate a normal environment beneath the cloak of smog. A pair of domes were built, by the International School of Beijing, to cover an area of six tennis courts, with hospital grade air-filtration systems, later the dean of the Beijing satellite of British school Dulwich College, which opened its own clean-air dome in 2013.
The British School has recently done a complete filtration overhaul, with new air curtains installed above the doors and almost 200 air purifiers mounted on ceilings in the school. The windows of the school must remain closed, and students must follow the strict air safety code. Reception classes stay indoors when the AQI hits 180. For primary kids the limit is 200, while the eldest students are allowed to brave the elements up to 250. Anything above 300 and school trips are cancelled.
2.9 Impact Of Air Pollution On Media
Nine thousands of runners took part in the 34th Beijing Interna-tional Marathon, many wearing face masks because of Air pollu-tion. The organizers warned runners to expect slight or moderate smog, but the US embassy in Beijing said air quality that day was “hazardous”.
One resident in the city told to a BBC journalist that the air smelt like burnt coal. Estimates said that pollution soared above the maximum recommended World Health Organization levels. The WHO says daily pollution levels should not exceed an average of 25 micrograms per cubic meter of fine particulate matter but the US embassy’s monitor at one point reported peaks of up to 400 micro-grams per cubic meter, which it said would be hazardous if a human was exposed to it over a 24-hour period.
Some athletes gave up the race because of the pollution. The Brit-ish runner Chas Pope tweeted that he was only able to run 10km of the race in a mask before he was forced to pull out. He said that race should have been cancelled because the air quality was “not suitable for outdoor activities”.
This facts are a bad advertising for Chinese cities, that are less and less attractive for people living in other countries. And more in gen-eral the global attention is always focused on the bad side of China because is very powerful and visible.
The air pollution rate in January 2013 monitored at the U.S. embassy in Beijing was defined “crazy-bad” and this affected a lot tourism. The number of foreigners coming to China took a sudden fall in the first half of 2013. The Associated Press reports that overall arrivals dropped by 5% to just under 13 million in the year to June 30. This figure includes tourists, residents and business travelers; China, the third largest destination for travelers after France and the U.S., saw a drop in arrivals from all regions.
Domestic tourism is booming in China, so a decrease of foreign vis-itors may not be a big issue. Chinese people are traveling overseas for leisure trips in record numbers, but most people still take their holidays at home, and must-see sites will continue to see foot traf-fic, even on smoggy days. However, a turnoff for foreign tourists means also a reduction of business travelers at a time of slowing economic growth and concerns over regulatory crackdowns. So this could be another indicator of the lessening attractiveness of Chi-na’s economy. It’s also a wake-up call for a stressed, exhausted en-vironment.
Air Pollution is a big problem not only in china, and every govern-ment is struggling to understand the right problems to tackle the pollution; moreover china is a huge country with one of the biggest population in the world. It’s crucial before to start to fight pollution understand with are the weaknesses of Chinese organization in or-der to find the right opportunities to work in.
In the study: “12th Five-Year Plan on Air Pollution Prevention and Control in Key Regions” 4 key areas are identified:
- Obsolete Air Environmental Management: The current environ-ment manageenviron-ment model is hardly appropriate for the air pollution prevention and control requirements. Regional air environment is-sues require the establishment of an integrated, unified planning mechanism between the local regions. According to the current management system and regulations, the local government is re-sponsible for the local environment quality, carrying out the mea-sures aimed at improving local environment quality and working separately, making it hard to solve regional air quality issues. - Relatively Simple Elements to Pollution Control: For a long time, China has not established a comprehensive multi-pollutant con-trol system aimed at improving air quality. From the perspective of pollution control factor, the main focus of the pollution control has been on SO2 and PM from industrial sources. Pollution controls for NOx and VOCs from fugitive dust, non-point sources, automobiles and non-road vehicles sources have been insufficient.
- Weak Environmental Monitoring and Statistical Foundations: Air environment quality monitoring indicator is incomplete, since most of the cities have not set up ozone and PM2.5 monitoring, which leads to weak control for data quality, so that it cannot reflect the current air pollution situation. VOCs and fugitive dust are not in-cluded in the environment statistic system, so the lack of data is hard to fulfill environment management requirements.
- Incomplete Regulation Criteria: The current laws and regulations about prevention and control of air pollution lack effective mea-sures to prevent and control air pollution and mobile pollution sources on a regional level. They also lack of VOCs emission stan-dards, comprehensive city dust management systems, and vehicle fuel standards lag behind the motor vehicle emission standards. Is pretty clear that a single simple solution is not possible. What is realistic to think is a combination of solutions that working to-gether can help to reduce significantly the Air Pollution problem.
In particular a System of different actions and projects regulated with a comprehensive multi-pollutant control system, consistently monitored and studied that works in an environment of new regu-lations and laws that could help to further develop those.
2.11 12th Five-Year plan principle
Coordinating economy development with environment protection. Control strategies for air pollutants and coal consumption and im-plementing the “Reversed Pressure Transmission Mechanism of environmental pressure” (Lijian, 2013) In order to switch from an old consumption based model to a new economic development model based on environmental protection and optimizing economic devel-opment. Will be possible to achieve this following different steps: adjusting the industry and energy structure, accelerating the elimi-nation of backward production capacity and processes, improve the clean production level of enterprise, decrease emission intensity of pollutants, and advance coordination between economy, society and environmental resource.
Jointing Prevention and Control Combined with Local Management. Establish a regional air pollution joint prevention and control mech-anism to achieve “unified planning, monitoring, management, evaluation and coordination”. According to the economy develop-ment level and environdevelop-ment pollution status of different cities, de-sign key control areas and general control areas to have different management. Point out regional pollution reduction responsibility based on the local management principles.
Unification of Total Emission Reduction and Quality Improvement. Establish a control, evaluation, and assessment system placing the quality improvement as the core, that considers the relationship between total emission reduction and quality improvement, estab-lish regional total amount control based on quality improvement. Through implementation of multi-pollutants co-control and bal-ance control of SO2, PM10, and VOCs will help to resolve air pollu-tion problems.
Exploring New Paths with Overall Coordination.
Start with key regions, key industries and key pollutants, advance work in all areas by drawing upon the experience gained. Central-ized control to solve the significant problems concerning to public health, local environmental safety, and sustainable economic soci-ety development. Accumulate important experiences in prevention and control of air pollution.
2.12 12th Five-Year Plan Objectives
The Chinese 12th five year plan Is divided in three main topics: Pre-vention, control and monitoring.
Both of them are very important, bot for a short and long strategy of Air pollution reduction. “By the year 2015, emission of the SO2, NOx, and industrial PM should decrease 12%, 13%, 10% respectively. The prevention and control of VOCs should proceed in well round way in key regions. The air environment quality should improve significantly with annual average concentration of PM10, SO2, NO2 and PM2.5 decreasing by 10%, 10%, 7%, and 5% respectively. Ozone pollution will be controlled and acid rain pollution will be reduced. Regional air pollution joint prevention and control mechanism will be established so that regional air environmental management ca-pacity significantly improves.
PM2.5 will be the assessment indicator of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta regions, and the concentra-tion of PM2.5 should decrease 6%.Other urban areas should consid-er it as an expected indicator.
In the following section both prevention and control strategies will be descriptor even though the prevention section is more related to new regulations and policies and for this reason less interesting for the project at this stage.” (Lijian, 2013)
2.13 12th Five-Year Plan Prevention
All the initiatives of the plan in this section are related, as said in the last chapter to new policies or new restrictions created in order to reduce the production of Air pollution where it is produced: in the production districts.
COORDINATION OF REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES, OP-TIMIZING INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE AND LAYOUT
1 Identify regional key points and implement the classification management: Identifying the types of regional pollution control, defining key control areas.
2 Stricter environmental thresholds, strengthen management at the source:
strict controls on high energy consumption and high pollution proj-ects, Strict controls of new pollutants emissions, implementation of special emission limits, Increase construction requirements for VOCs emission projects.
3 Accelerate elimination of backward production capacity and opti-mize industrial layout: Increase elimination of backward production capacity, eliminate backward thermal power, steel-iron, and build-ing materials production capacity, eliminate backward production capacity in VOCs emission industry, optimizing industrial layout. STRENGTHEN CLEAN ENERGY UTILIZATION AND CAP REGIONAL COAL CONSUMPTION
1 Optimize the energy structure and cap coal use: Develop clean en-ergy, implement cap on coal consumption, expand restricted zones for high polluting fuels,
2 Improve coal utilization pattern and advance coal clean utilization: Increase cogeneration projects and eliminate small coal boilers, im-prove coal quality and advance clean, efficient utilization of coal. STRENGTHEN TREATMENT OF AIR POLLUTION AND IMPLEMEN-TATION OF CO-CONTROL FOR MULTIPLE POLLUTANTS
1Strengthen the treatment of SO2 and develop comprehensive con-trol of nox: Comprehensive SO2 reduction, develop comprehensive nox controls,
2 Enhance the treatment of industrial smoke and dust and vigor-ously reduce particulate matter emission: Enhance smoke treat-ment in the thermal power industry, enhance dust treattreat-ment in the cement industry, improve particulate matter treatment in the iron &steel industry, advance comprehensive smoke treatment for in-dustrial coal-fired boilers, actively advance inin-dustrial kiln PM treat-ment.
3 Develop key sectors management and refine VOCs pollution pre-vention system: development of VOCs survey, perfect VOCs emis-sion control requirements & policy system in key sectors, compre-hensive development of oil and gas recovery in gas stations, oil storage tanks & oil tank trucks, reduce VOCs emissions in petro-chemical industry, actively advance VOCs control in organic chem-ical industries, strengthen VOCs control for coating processes, ad-vance VOCs treatment in solvent utilization.
4 Enhance toxic waste control and perform international conven-tion targets: strengthen toxic wastes control, advance atmospher-ic mercury emissions control, elimination of ozone-depleting sub-stances.
5 Strengthen vehicle pollution prevention and effectively control mobile source emission: Rapid Development of the Sustainable Transportation System Develop city and intercity public transit and rail system, implement transit priority strategy for urban transpor-tation development, improve the travel conditions for biking and
walking, and encourage green forms of travel. Strengthen and op-timize the construction of urban areas road network structure, and increase traffic efficiency via alternate working hours and adjusting parking fees. Popularize urban intelligent traffic management and eco-driving technology. Encourage the adoption and use environ-mental friendly motorcycles, popularize the utilization of gas-fu-eled vehicles and new energy vehicles, and gradually perfect rele-vant foundational infrastructure. Actively popularize electric buses and taxis.
Start to research policies for controlling the size of the urban motor vehicle population (travel volume is the key), and try to regulate and control the total motor vehicle population size in megacities and big cities.
6 Upgrade Fuel Quality Standards
Accelerate upgrades to low-sulfur auto-fuel processes, issue and implement National phase IV auto-fuel standard. National IV au-to-gasoline (sulfur content is not more than 50 ppm) will be sup-plied fully by the end of 2013, and National V auto-diesel will be supplied by the end of 2014 in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta regions as priority areas. The sulfur content in regular diesel will be reduced to below 350 ppm before July 1, 2013 while the sulfur content in the fuels used for ocean vessels will be gradually reduced to below 2000 ppm.
Enhance the supervision and inspection of oil quality by cracking down on illegal production and sale of vehicle oils that do not meet the requirements of national and local standards. Establish a sound oil quality control system in all petrochemical industries in order to guarantee overall oil quality. Vehicle oils sold in gas stations on highways and in city urban have to meet the auto-gasoline and auto-diesel standards. Advance the construction of urea charging station, and finish the establishment of urea charging network by the end of 2015, to ensure the SCR devices in diesel vehicles could be operated smoothly.
7 Deepen Environmental Management of Existing Vehicles
Implement the examination and issuing of environmental labeling for vehicles, and over 85% will be issued by the end of 2015.An in-telligently and digitally way to manage environmental labeling will be developed. Push for delegation overall vehicle environmental ex-amination, accelerate installation process of online environmental monitoring equipment, strength quality management of checkout equipment, increase quality control for monitoring data from envi-ronmental examination agencies, strengthen measurement
tech-nology supervision and data verification, and advance the standard-ized operation of environmental examination agencies. Accelerate the implementation process for a simplified test method for vehicle exhaust. Perfect the vehicle environmental inspection and mainte-nance (I/M) system.
8 Accelerate the Elimination of Yellow-Sticker Vehicles
Strictly implement the mandatory elimination of older vehicles, and strengthen the management and supervision of the manda-tory scrapping of commercial vehicles. Implement limit line mea-sures for yellow-sticker vehicles through by providing sound local laws and regulations to accelerate the elimination process of yel-low-sticker vehicles. By the end of 2013, yelyel-low-sticker vehicles will be forbidden in the main urban zones of the key control areas and in other cities by the end of 2015. Push for the centralization of management for city buses, taxies, intercity buses and carrier ve-hicles (including low-speed veve-hicles) to stop the black smoke-dis-charging phenomenon. By the end of 2015, aggressively aim for the elimination of the commercial vehicles registered before the end of 2005, so that yellow sticker vehicles will be almost eliminated in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl River Delta regions.
9 Strength Urban Forestation
Strength urban forestation combined with city development and industrial distribution, work hard to increase the urban greening level, enhance self-purification ability of environment. Build green ecological protective barrier like windbreak and sand fix forestry system. Implement ecological rehabilitation, strength the treat-ment of various abandoned mines, to recover the ecological vege-tation and landscape, and control fugitive dust.
INNOVATIVE REGIONAL MANAGEMENT MECHANISM AND IM-PROVE JOINT PREVENTION AND CONTROL MANAGEMENT CAPAC-ITY
1 Establish an unified regional air quality monitoring system Strengthen the construction of regional environment air quality monitoring system. According to the requirement of “12th Five Year” national air monitoring network setup plan, each province should gradually build capacity for their urban air quality monitoring stations. In the mean time, uniformly layout the number of regional station on transfer tunnels located outside the city center or region. All city-monitoring stations will increase monitoring for PM2.5, O3, and CO with digital environment photography record systems to carry out all indicators monitoring. The regional station should also
add monitoring capacity for visibility and meteorological five pa-rameters. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl River Delta region should finish the regional environmental air qual-ity monitoring system before the end of 2012, and other cities ag-glomeration should finish regional environmental air quality moni-toring systems before the end of 2015. Strengthen construction of super air quality monitoring station and carry out the monitoring of the effect in roadside environment from moving sources.
Strengthen overall monitoring data quality control and reinforce regulations on monitoring technology and data auditing. Connect all regional monitoring stations with the central national environ-ment monitoring station in order to transfer the environenviron-ment air quality data in real time. Provincial environmental management departments are responsible for supervising quality control of ur-ban air quality monitoring stations, while the Ministry of Environ-ment Protection carries out the spot-checking, flight check and cross-check for quality control. All 631 city monitoring stations and 61 regional stations in the key regions are considered important ev-idence for air quality monitoring, evaluation and assessment in this plan.
1 STRENGTHENING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT
Increase efforts in support of regional air pollution joint prevention and control technology research and development in the area of national and local relevant special plan of science and technology.
2.14 Other Strategies of the 12th Five-Year plan
Accelerate the push forward of the key technology plan of air pol-lution integrated management, carrying out the countermeasures studies on photochemical smog and haze pollution control. Carry out the research on regional air pollution control countermeasures system by increasing the research, development and demonstra-tions on the technology like industrial VOCs pollution prevention, highly efficient SO2, NOx, dust removal technology for coal-fired boilers, de-nitrification in the cement industry and mercury remov-al technology in coremov-al-fired power plants. Promotion advanced and practical techniques. Carry out the study of multi-pollutant co-con-trol techniques in key industry.
2 STRENGTHEN PUBLICITY AND EDUCATION
wide range of environmental publicity education activities that will popularize air protection knowledge, improve overall environmen-tal consciousness of residences, and enhance the ability of public participation in environmental protection. Reinforce personnel training, improve the recognition of leaders on the importance of atmospheric pollution joint prevention and control, and advance the business skill set of environmental protection personnel. News media must fully play a role in atmospheric environmental pro-tection. Actively publicize the importance and urgency of regional air pollution joint prevention and control, the adoption of policies, measures, and achievements. Promote advanced models, advance public supervision, and create a positive atmosphere for air quality improvement.
2.15 Research Key Findings
This research about pollution in the world and specifically in China helped me to understand with are the most important problems related to pollution and what Chinese government is working on right now in order to tackle Air Pollution in China.
This starting point is helpful to understand where the opportunities areas are and where a service design project can be positioned in order to create a big impact for citizens.
As shown before, there are three main topics talking about fighting air pollution:
Prevention ( policy,regulations, investments, etc…)
Control ( all those project and actions working inside the city to low down the level of Air Pollution)
Monitoring (monitoring the level of pollution constantly)
Every of those three actions are crucial in order to fight Pollution and create a better environment where citizens can continue to live without a constant fear of open air.
However the prevention phase regard the mainly the government policy and this is the reason why the project will not focus on it. The development would start from those policies trying to work mainly on the two other aspects: Control and Monitoring.
The reason why the project will focus on both those aspect is be-cause often they coexist and it’s easier to improve the project gath-ering also information from the city instead of just try to solve the problem.
This section Will talk about existing solution starting from Shang-hai and annulling other case studies from allover the world. At the end of all the case study there will be a short analysis useful to point out which are the main characteristics and isights of that par-ticular case study.
The case studies presented are not homogeneous but have differ-ent perspectives: Architecture, design, regulations, urban planning, It, data analysis.
3.1 Shanghai Car Plate Control
One of the most known policies in Shanghai to decrease the level of traffic and Air Pollution is the limitations of car plate permit. Shanghai is one of four Chinese cities that limit car purchases by imposing quotas on registrations. The prices paid at Shanghai’s li-cense auctions in recent months 90.000 yuan (Bloomberg, 2013). While residents with modest incomes may be able to afford an in-expensive car, the registration cost is often beyond their reach. Shanghai officials have put in place a complicated and expensive process to purchase the right to add a car to the often-gridlocked roads of this city of 23 million people. To register for the license auction, prospective car buyers must put down 2,000 yuan as good faith money. In exchange, they get a disc loaded with software they
can use to bid online. After a couple of rounds of offers, the govern-ment figures out the highest price it can charge to completely sell out the year’s new allotment of licenses. Lottery participants who had bid at least that much then get to pay for their plates.
Moreover a there is also a regulation on how and when use your car due to your plate that use of Baoding’s Second Ring Road on Fri-day between the hours of 7AM and 8PM was restricted to those of the city’s 1.92 million cars with an even number at the end of their license plate. The following Saturday, the roads were only open to cars with an odd number at the end of their plate. Buses and public service vehicles such as ambulances were still allowed to use the roads regardless of their license plate number.
Unfortunately there is not a precise monitoring system yet in order to understand if this restriction really works.
Topic: Regulations
Main characteristics: reduce the number of vehicles in the city in
order to low down level of traffic and pollution in Shanghai.
Problems: No specific monitoring system, people can’t see the
3.2 Bike Sharing Shanghai
The program was launched to coincide with World Car Free Day on Monday and is part of the city’s preparations to host the 2010 World Expo, whose theme is “Better City, Better Life”, Shanghai Metro said. The limited trial began at a metro station near a high-tech research centre in the Pudong area to encourage people to bike between the station and their offices, Shanghai Metro said.
To use the system, riders must pay a 200 yuan deposit and are charged one to three yuan an hour on a progressive system de-signed to encourage short rents and quick turnover. The first half hour is free. The bicycles are being supplied by the Shanghai Forev-er Bicycle Company, one of Shanghai’s oldest bicycle brands. Shang-hai-made Forever, Phoenix and Flying Pigeon brand bicycles used to dominate the city’s roads, but as China has become more affluent cars have taken over.
The city recently banned bicycles from traveling on select major roads to prevent them from slowing down motorists.
suc-cessful “Velib” scheme, which was launched in 2007 and has since been emulated by other cities.
The city started testing the bike-sharing system to coincide with World Car Free Day.
Topic: Service Design
Main characteristics: Promote the use of Bicycle in order to low
down level of traffic and pollution in Shanghai.
Problems: The service does not work well in Shanghai and there
are no indication on how much pollution you save using the Bike Sharing System.
3.3 Area C Milano
The C area is the downtown area of Milan that was closed in order to prevent traffic and pollution. The fee to enter C area is €5 for all vehicles. The payment allows users to travel for the whole day in the charged area. Residents have 40 free daily entries per year and from the 41st day on, they have to pay a reduced daily tariff of € 2. Cars entering Area C are detected by a system of 43 electronic gates (of which seven are reserved for public transport vehicles), equipped with Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology. Data on en-vironmental pollution are obtained from Enen-vironmental Monitoring Stations deployed in the city.
The net revenue generated by Area C, based on the first month’s data, has been estimated at about €23.5m of income for 2012, of
which nearly €11.2m was available at 30 June 2012. All the income from Area C will be reinvested in projects for sustainable mobility for a new park and ride Metro Line 3, improvement of bike sharing system (2nd phase up to 200 stations at the end of 2012), public transport.
Periodic reports on the impacts of Area C are made available on the City of Milan website (link is external). On the website citizens and city users are invited to report problems or offer suggestions through a public forum section. Further personalized queries may be carried out via a statistical section (link is external) of the mu-nicipal
website. An index of congestion, parking occupancy, numbers of Metro passengers, the speed of public transport, number of tickets sold and the number of fines issued are some of most important indicators that are processed.
After six months the outcomes (from January to June 2012) are as follows:
“Traffic average reduction: -34 per cent (46.133 fewer vehicles en-tered Area C);
Traffic average reduction outside Area C: -6,9 per cent
Reduction in the numbers of most polluting vehicles: - 49% (-2400 vehicles entering every day the Area C);
Increase of cleaner vehicles: +6.1% (from 9.6 to 16.6 per cent of the total vehicles entering the Area C);
Increase in public transport running speed: +7% (bus) and +4.7% (tram);
Reduction in number of accidents: -28%;
Reduction of emissions of pollutants from traffic in the Area C Cer-chia dei Bastioni: PM10 exhaust -19%; PM10 total -18 per cent; NH3 -31%; NOx -10% and CO2 -22%” (Eltis, 2015).
Topic: Regulation
Main characteristics: close one area of the city in order to low down
the level of pollution.
Problems: Area c is seen as an imposition by the population and
3.4 Track Pollutions With a Smartphone
A new study will use smartphone technology provided with a Pol-lution sensor to help track polPol-lution exposure. Researchers at the University at Buffalo are creating the new phone application as well, in order to assess a person’s exposure over time to pollutants in different urban areas. Since a city’s air pollution can vary a lot be-tween downtown streets to playgrounds to backyards researchers felt it was important to collect data throughout the day from vari-ous locations. They decided that smart phones equipped with GPS can do this very well. 40 participants in the two year study will use their own GPS equipped smart phones which will record their loca-tion several times a day during a three month study period. Their location is registered automatically so people in the study don’t have to call in or enter any information. Researchers will then check air pollution monitoring sites in various locations to figure out how
much pollution the participant has been exposed to.
Topic: IT Study
Main characteristics: Track pollution in order to understand
pre-cisely the concentration in the city
Problems: It involves only 40 people and it has the limitation to be
3.5 Air Casting
AirCasting is a platform for recording, mapping, and sharing health and environmental data using your smartphone. Each AirCasting session lets you capture real-world measurements, annotate the data to tell your story, and share it via the CrowdMap.
Using the AirCasting Android app, AirCasters can record, map, and share:
Sound levels recorded by their phone microphone;
Temperature, humidity, and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) con-centrations recorded by the Arduino-powered AirBeam;|
Temperature, humidity, carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) gas concentrations recorded by the Arduino-powered
Air-Casting Air Monitor;
Heart rate, heart rate variability, R to R, breathing rate, activity lev-el, peak acceleration and core temperature measurements recorded by the Zephyr BioHarness:
Heart rate measurements recorded by the Zephyr HxM.
Using AirCasting Luminescence, these sensor streams can also be represented using LED lights.
To start recording, mapping, and sharing sound level data for your neighborhood, simply download the Air Casting app to your Android device and press record. Want to record Air Quality data? Buy an AirBeam, download the AirCasting Air Monitor DIY guide, or build your own monitor and connect it to the AirCasting platform. AirCasting is an open source project. The AirCasting app and web-site code is on GitHub as is the AirBeam firmware and the electronic schematics for the AirBeam. The STL files for 3D printing the Air-Beam & LiteAir-Beam enclosures can be downloaded from Shapeways.
Topic: PSS
Main characteristics: Track pollution in order to create a map of
pol-lution in the city.
open source Product, It mix different layer of information of the user in order to give an overview of his health status over time. Creation of a new layer of information in the city map regarding pollution in precise areas.
Problems: The users wear the sensor this mean that the
informa-tion about polluinforma-tion has a value only from a spacial point of view. The data has no meaning of time.
It help to understand better the composition of the air in the City but doesn’t help to clean it.
3.6 aqicn.org
aqicn.org is a platform that gather informations about air pollution in a lot of cities in the world. It provides information in different spot of the city and gives an average.
It very accurate because it shows the concentration of different pol-lutants but its not well spread in the city. There are not so many sensors it means that the map is not super accurate.
The information are updated constantly.
The website has a section about the whole world and thanks to that is possible to understand which areas are the most polluted. The website provide also useful information about pollution such
as FAQ section that mainly talks about how pollution affects hu-man health.
Another section provide a benchmark of different filtering masks explaining features and price of each one.
It is also available an app that shows the same data.
Topic: IT, website and app
Main characteristics: Database of information regarding level of
pollutants in the air, provides useful hints for everyday life.
Problems: The sensors are not spread in the city. It is just an
infor-mation website, the inforinfor-mation are not used to low down the level of pollutants.
3.7 Air quality China
Air Quality China is a free Mobile application to check real time Air Quality Index (AQI) values of all major cities in China. It also comes with an app widget which is updated automatically for every 30 minutes.
It provides information from different monitoring stations: the U.S. Embassy station, Wanshou Park station, Willow Park station, etc. Those info are not shown in space, the reason the app give more lines is just to make the information more trustable.
Topic: IT, app
Main characteristics: Provides data of different monitoring
sta-tion about pollusta-tion daily
Problems: It made just for a general information about pollution.
3.8 Changers
The app then measures your speed and distance and calculates the CO2 balance of the journey accordingly. The amount of CO2 savings or emission is then added to your Changers account. If you have saved more CO2 than emitted, you are rewarded with ReCoins. For instance by bicycle you save 1.42 kg/10 km of CO2 compared to a journey by car. This will be credited to you on your CO2 account and converted into ReCoins.
If you use public transportation such as bus or train, savings and CO2 emissions take place simultaneously. The emissions we
calcu-late refers to average kg/km for this transport type. The savings credited to you results from the difference of the CO2 emissions between public transport and a car.
If you travel by car or plane, these journeys result in an exclusively negative balance, because you emit large amounts of CO2 with no CO2 savings. Don’t fret, because later you can compensate a nega-tive CO2 balance with ReCoins.
Topic: Pss
Main characteristics: Generate R-Coin calculating how much CO2
save during your daily life. It’s a way to create gasification around sustainability.
3.9 IBM “Green Horizon” Project
IBM’s cognitive computing systems will analyze and learn from streams of real-time data generated by air quality monitoring sta-tions, meteorological satellites and IBM’s new-generation optical sensors all connected by the internet of things. By applying super-computing processing power, scientists from IBM and the Beijing Government aim to create visual maps showing the source and dis-persion of pollutants across Beijing 72 hours in advance with street-scale resolution.
With accurate, real-time data about Beijing’s air quality, the gov-ernment will be able to take rapid action to address environmental issues by adjusting production at specific factories or alerting citi-zens about developing air quality issues.
“The Chinese government is taking bold steps to transform the country’s energy and environmental structures. IBM is here to help
and through Green Horizon we are committed to deploying our most advanced technologies and best talent from around the world,” said Dr. Xiaowei Shen, Director, IBM Research, China.
Topic: Big Data Mining
Main characteristics: Use data mining in order to create accurate
models on Air Pollution behavior
3.10 Existing Solutions Key Findings
All of the Case study has interesting features, Strength and weak-nesses and study those is interesting to understand what is miss-ing on the market and where to act in order to create somethmiss-ing that is in the same time innovative, useful and user friendly. From the example of Shanghai Car Plate Control and in a way also Area C Milano is easy to understand that were created with a TOP-DOWN approach.
Both the project have the focus of reduce Air Pollution in the city, and from the datas after the application of Area C in Milan is pos-sible do say that it works. The main weaknesses of those project is the absence of dialogue with citizens. Both of them ask to every citizen to change their behavior in order to low down the level of pollution and traffic in the city; the citizen is forced to pay a lot of money to enter the Area C or to get a plate but the municipal-ity doesn’t provide any visible information about how this effort affected the Air in the city. This approach is generally considered a duty and doesn’t show properly why a citizen should do it with proper touch-points.
Bike Sharing could be a viable public transport because incentives the use of bicycle in the city. The big issue in Shanghai is that there are not enough infrastructure so that the use of bicycle as a mean of transportation would be perceived as worthy option. Anoth-er big issue in introducing bike sharing in Shanghai is the pollu-tion itself. People are worried sometimes using bicycle because it makes breath more for this reason during many days bicycle is not the best mean of transportation in a city like Shanghai.
A completely different story are the applications and websites, this product are divided mainly in two different sections app and website made just to inform people about the level of pollution and app and website that try to inform and change behaviors of citizens.
The limitation of the first class of App and website is pretty clear as long those are only an information tool their use is very limited even because the level of information provided is very general and not always true. The applications are not open source and is never possible to download datas from them.
However the strength of information app and website is that are updated very often and this makes them used by a lot of users. It’s interesting to see how those information provided by those platforms can really affect behavior of both Chinese and expats people in the city (as previously said in chapter 2.3.2 How Chinese
