A mobile measuring station produces street-level data on air quality, the weather, use of street space and the condition of the roads. Such data can help us understand the causes and effects of urban heat islands, among other things.
People walking the streets of Helsinki this spring might have spotted a new kind of vehicle. An electric scooter travelling on walkways at the cautious speed of 10 kilometres per hour and carrying a heavy load of technology - sensors, measuring equipment and cameras - has been circling in the districts of Kallio, Kumpula and Vallila.
On its way around town, the vehicle has been collecting data, such as the temperature, air humidity, wind direction and force, and the amount of sunlight. In addition, it has monitored air quality by measuring concentrations of fine particles, nitrogen oxides and ozone. And all this at the pinpoint accuracy of individual street corners.
The measurement results are combined with location and camera data, the latter of which record, for example, the condition of streets and traffic flow - anything that the researchers wish to analyse from the images. Citizens need not worry about privacy: faces and licence plates are automatically blurred.
"The small scooter, in fact, symbolises a major breakthrough," says Professor of Aerosol Physics from the University of Helsinki, who heads the project.
"This is the first step towards understanding the urban environment in a new way, on a continuous basis, on the move and on the street level."
Text continues after the image.
Why 'hot town, summer in the city'?
Usually the scooter makes a 50-kilometre tour in a day. When it travels the same streets several times, measurement data can be gathered for different times of the day.
This allows researchers to tackle, for instance, the phenomenon of urban heat islands, which plagues many southern cities. In this phenomenon, certain streets or districts may be hotter by several degrees than their neighbouring streets. The scooter can be used to examine how plants, shadows and the wind affect the temperature and how the heat, for its part, affects people's readiness to spend time on the streets.
"Traditional measuring is largely based on points of location and time, such as individual measuring stations, periodic campaigns and modelling. That works well for certain purposes, but does not yield a daily up-to-date overview," describes Kangasluoma.
He explains that none of the individual variables measured are entirely new, but combining them and their locations is an innovation.
"By bringing together the data collected by different measuring devices, we can generate new information. For example, we can investigate how air quality and the microclimate affect people's desire to spend time in a given area and the wear and tear of the infrastructure."
Last summer, test drives on bicycles concentrated on the Fleminginkatu and Vaasankatu streets, which were closed to cars, and on the neighbouring streets that carried the traffic loads.
"Air quality varied from street to street. Fleminginkatu with no car traffic had far less fine particles and noise than Kaarlenkatu on the other side of the block."
Text continues after the image.
Accurate data is of interest to cities
The mobile measuring station, while being part of the long tradition of developing measuring technology at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Helsinki, is also a commercialisation project known as IdealSens, which aims to offer cities a new way to monitor changes in the urban environment. The project seeks clients primarily from abroad.
"The project has solicited the greatest interest in southern Europe, where rises in temperature in urban spaces easily become problematic," says Petri Koskinen, who is in charge of developing and commercialising the mobile measuring station concept.
Mapping heat islands is not, however, the sole purpose of the scooter. The data collected by it can be used, for example, to study the smoothness of traffic flow and the state of the infrastructure.
"We can mount a movable green wall on the street and see how it affects the local air quality and noise and how people respond to it. If people are spending more time on the streets, we must conduct further studies on how this is reflected in their wellbeing."
From scooter to robot
This spring, test drives have been conducted also in Barcelona and in various parts of Estonia. In the summer, the research group is heading to Sicily. In the testing phase, the group will include two or three researchers.
In the future, the measuring station may not have any need for human input.
"Once we get to the point of scaling the concept, I believe that in the long run independently mobile robots will replace the scooters," concludes Koskinen.
