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Description
The town of Velvary has a large share of family houses in the total built-up area. There are no prefabricated housing estates in the city, only a few apartment buildings with gas heating. Local heating with solid fuels is therefore a primary source of pollution. A secondary source of pollution is industrial production, mainly from the largest company in the city, Metal Trade Comax. The aim of the project is to map the concentrations of aerosol particles of PM10, PM2.5 and PM1 fractions by creating a network of sensory dust meter units that will continuously monitor the level of pollution in individual city districts. The project envisages the installation of 7 dust-measuring sensory units, one reference certified dust measuring station and one meteorological sensory unit.
Summary of project results
The goal of the project was to create a network of monitoring stations that would help the city of Velvary to monitor air quality and its pollution due to local heating in the long term. Thanks to the project, we wanted to show the effect local heating plants have on air quality in the city and open a debate with citizens about possible ways to improve the situation. We also wanted to gain first experience with measuring air quality and discuss how to use the created system in the future and possibly expand it. All this, we believe, has been achieved.
As part of the project, in cooperation with the implementation company and an expert partner, we created a monitoring system consisting of 7 dust measuring sensor units located in different locations in the city, one reference certified dust measuring station and one meterological sensor unit. This system was put into operation and the measurement outputs were visible on the Internet. The results of the measurements drew attention to the significant negative impact of the burning of solid fuels in local furnaces on air quality and helped to open a debate on the need for improvement, which, in our opinion, should contribute to efforts for greater environmental protection.
The main output was the performance of a six-monthly measurement, the results of which the public could continuously monitor. This opened up a debate that took place at press conferences, but also continuously. People were surprised that the situation is worse in places that are away from the city center than in the center. It was expected that the center would have poor air quality due to the traffic load, but higher values were shown, for example, in local parts where they heat in local furnaces. The results also contributed to the debate about the possible influence of local industry on air quality - one of the units was located near local smelters, but the results do not indicate that there is increased dust. An interesting result of the project is the public''s interest in continuing the measurement.
We believe that the project was beneficial in that a) it helped the city of Velvary to create a functional sensor system for measuring air quality, the outputs of which are accessible to the public and which the city wants to operate in the long term, and b) it helped to open a data-based debate about air quality in the city and thus and to find ways to improve it.