The project LIFE+RESPIRA, led by the University of Navarra and aimed at improving the quality of the air breathed by pedestrians and urban cyclists in Pamplona, has so far involved 114 volunteers, willing to measure the air quality in their journeys on two wheels.       

Volunteers will carry on their bicycles small equipment equipped with sensors that will detect the main air pollutants and the proportion in which they are present. "From the information collected, about 5 million data per month for two years, a map of air pollution in Pamplona will be drawn up, and a planner of healthy routes will be developed," explained Jesús Miguel Santamaría, director of the laboratory Integrated Environmental Quality of the University of Navarra and director technical project.

The 114 people registered -74 men and 40 women- are aged between 18 and 69. Of these, 96 (84%) use bicycles on a daily basis and the rest use them at least once a week. "The partnership citizen is very important. Volunteers are one of the fundamental values of the project", said Maribel Gómez, professor at area of Geography and Territorial Planning at the University of Navarra, manager in charge of managing the participation of the group volunteers.

The pollution map will be confined to the municipality of Pamplona, and the origin of the volunteers who ride their bicycles belongs to different neighborhoods and localities of the Pamplona basin. The call will remain open until all the routes required for the study are covered. Interested persons can register by calling 948 425600, ext. 802310, or by e-mail mgomezj@unav.es (Maribel Gómez).

Pollution, cause of 370,000 premature deaths in Europe

The project LIFE+RESPIRA is supported by the LIFE financial instrument of the European Union and will run until June 2017. Together with the University of Navarra, the Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT), the public business management Ambiental de Navarra (GANASA) and Pavimentos de Tudela are participating in the study. A total of 32 researchers are participating in the study.

In addition, the Pamplona City Council, the Pamplona Region Association, the business Oraintxe and the association de Medios de Transporte Saludable (AMTS) are also collaborating, providing support for the characterization of the mobility cyclist and for the collection of data.

The initiative is based on the need to monitor and improve air quality in European cities to contribute to a better quality of urban life. According to data of the European Environment Agency, air pollution causes 370,000 premature deaths annually in Europe. Likewise, "the economic cost of illnesses is 400,000 million euros a year", according to Jesús Miguel Santamaría.

LIFE+RESPIRA has as goal to demonstrate that it is possible to improve air quality, applying sustainability criteria to manage air pollution, improving urban planning, taking into account urban vegetation and applying new technologies, such as photocatalytic pavements, which destroy 35-40% of air pollution. mobilityThe experience of Pamplona will be replicable, as 80% of European cities are of a similar size to Pamplona, and 80% of European cities are of a similar size to Pamplona. Pamplona's experience will be replicable, since 80% of European cities are similar in size to the capital of Navarre.

The project, with a duration of three years, will carry out 100 communication actions with the goal to "promote the use of bicycles", which currently use 3.5% of the population in Pamplona, as explained Bienvenido León, professor of the School of Communication and manager of the communication plan of project.

In this sense, next Thursday, February 19, at 19:30 pm in the Planetarium of Pamplona, will take place the public presentation of project, open to anyone interested.

The prototype developed

The prototype developed integrates different electrochemical sensors for the measurement of atmospheric pollutants: carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitrogen monoxide (NO) and ozone (O3), considered the main gases of interest for the urban pollution map of Pamplona, and that will allow to evaluate the quality of the air inhaled by urban cyclists during their trips around the city. It has been developed by business GreenWave Technologies, through the KUNAK brand. In addition, some bicycles will have specific equipment for measuring particulate matter and the so-called "black carbon", pollutants of great importance due to their harmful effects on health.

The main features of these sensors are wireless communication via GRPS with a server hosted in the cloud, which allows the visualization of data in real time, its processing and remote configuration in the equipment. It also includes a real-time clock and GPS receiver to correlate measurements in space and time and various sensors of interest, including gases, temperature and relative humidity.

More information:

You can follow all the information related to project on its website www.liferespira.eu and on its social media profiles on Twitter and Facebook.