Running for clean air

We had a blast last Sunday with UrbanBetter, Celia CIC and interested urbanites on our walk+run from Brixton to Camberwell. These spots were chosen as there are Breathe London monitors at each location. In between, we tracked air quality (using AirTrack and a hand-held monitor) and used the Cityzens app to log observations of how the location made us feel during outdoor activity and why.

We presented all this at an event for London Climate Action Week. It was a new experience for us combining ‘pure’ data (basically numbers) with experiential data, such as how an urban environment feels and what good and bad aspects it presents to Cityzens.

We were able to bring together the ongoing data streams for the two Breathe London monitors (bottom right, with Brixton in orange and Camberwell in green) with our AirTrack data showing dosage of runners (orange) and walkers (green) during the event. One key finding was how high ozone was, especially later in the afternoon during the event.

The discussion during the event was in depth, combining experience in London, Accra and Bogotá. We’ve had a long week so forgive us for not having a full summary! If you are on Linked In, here is a summary from the moderator, Gabriel, and from Claudia, one of the panellists. Perhaps we can delve into those international city stories in future blogs!

Our excuse for almost running out of steam this week, is that it’s been full on trying to get votes for the Reset Connect prize for Air Aware Labs. And guess what - we did it! We started yesterday about 100 votes behind the leader, and by 3pm we were almost 200 above. Incredible, but also stressful! Huge thanks to everyone who voted for us - we know it wasn’t the most straightforward process!

Later on yesterday, Louise went out to Parliament to find out if we’d won the Entrepreneur of the Year and Investee Company of the Year awards. We didn’t but were so happy just to be recognised as finalists in this prestigious ceremony!