On 19 July 2022, an AirView car started taking air quality measurements in Augsburg. The measurement campaign is part of the European EXPANSE project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme. The project aims to understand how environmental factors such as air pollution effect human health and disease. The car was donated to Data- and Knowledge Hub Healthy Urban Living by Google and has already visited other European cities such as Barcelona, London, Dublin, Basel, Amsterdam and Copenhagen.  

Air pollution is a key environmental factor affecting human health. Exposure to air pollutants is linked to health impacts such as respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. The instrumentation in the car measured factors such as nitrogen dioxide, ultrafine particles (UFP) and black carbon (BC). Furthermore, variations in air pollution can occur over short distance due to factors such as building heights, specific street characteristics or vegetation. Using the AirView car variations in air pollution can be captured across the city at a high resolution.  

In collaboration with the Helmholtz Zentrum in Munich, the Chair of Model-based Environmental Exposure Science (MBEES) provided a HiWi for the campaign and during which the car drove approximately 1000 km in and around Augsburg.  The data from the campaign can be used map the spatial distribution of air pollutants, reduce the health burden of air pollution, and provide valuable data to support existing air quality and exposure research.