Academics based in the UK are recruiting a network of ‘citizen scientists’ to help monitor traffic flow in five cities across Europe.
Some 1,500 sensors are to be sited in homes in Madrid, Dublin, Cardiff, the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, and Leuven in Belgium.
They will collect data such as the number and speed of vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists passing by them.
The components for the sensors will be made by Raspberry Pi.
This hardware is commercially available and is powered by a micro USB port.
Software that has been developed by Transport & Mobility Leuven (TML) will record and analyse the size and speed of passing objects and determine whether they are vehicles or people.
They will latch on to the household Wi-Fi like any other connected device and upload the data to the cloud.
The data will be publicly available but will not identify the house number or exact location of the sensor, just the street or road it is on.
The survey is part of a project called Citizens Observing UrbaN Transport (WeCount), and Professor Enda Hayes said that they hoped to get ordinary people involved in the role of citizen scientists.
Participation of citizen scientists is key to the project
Hayes said that they are going to be targeting specific areas but also requesting that people volunteer to have sensors put in their homes.
He said that the data is going to be uploaded to the cloud so that it can be seen by anybody – citizens, the local council or NGOs.
He added that the evidence can be utilised in various initiatives concerning factors such as speed, air pollution, noise, safety and active travel, and it will hopefully place citizens at the centre of these debates.
Hayes added that while the primary goal is to study and ultimately reduce air pollution from traffic, the data could also be used for other purposes.
In Cardiff, for example, the project is planning to place sensors near schools to collect data on issues related to the school run.
They can also be used by councils to deal with traffic and congestion problems in specific areas.
Hayes said that this is the largest traffic study of its kind, and was made possible due to the relatively inexpensive cost of the sensors and the participation of ordinary people.
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