Improved air quality - Wood burning

Air pollution is one of the biggest environmental problems in urban areas. The sources of air pollution in cities are mainly traffic, domestic heating and industries. In our study, we will focus in wood burning for domestic heating, as it is one of the most important sources of air pollution.

Wood burning

Wood burning is one of the main contributors to particulate matter in urban areas, and affects human health. In addition, the incomplete combustion of wood emits black carbon, which is a short- lived climate pollutant. Thus addressing wood burning emissions is important for mitigating both air pollution and climate change.

Need for better understanding of emissions

Addressing pollution from wood burning for residential heating requires better knowledge of emissions. We need detailed information about the amount of wood consumed, type of burning stove, geographical distribution and when it takes place. Information about emissions is available in Norway although it is aggregated at regional levels, which is not suitable for urban studies.

Crowdsourcing to improve our knowledge on emissions

Within the iResponse project, we will use citizen participation and crowdsourcing techniques to gather data to improve the knowledge about emissions from residential heating with wood burning. A web-based application will be developed based on a co-designing process. With this application citizens will track their energy use for residential heating with wood burning. The data reported by citizens will be combined with data obtained from other sources such as Statistics Norway, public participation GIS surveys (i.e. Maptionnaire), or stove use sensors, which will be tested within the project.

A case study will be carried out in the most populated urban areas (e.g. Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim). The overall crowdsourced data will be assimilated to obtain the distribution of wood burning emissions at high spatial and temporal resolution. The results will be visualized as a tool for policy makers and distributed to the public to create awareness regarding emissions and potential impact on urban sustainability.

Want to get involved? We want to hear from you!

Please contact

Susana Lopez-Aparicio (NILU): sla@nilu.no

Matthias Vogt (NILU): mvo@nilu.no