Pedestrians with pocket-size sensors are to take part in a £4.1 million anti-pollution project, it has been announced.
Shoebox-size sensors will also be fitted to buses to measure pollution levels.
The project is due to start shortly in London, Cambridge, Leicester and Gateshead in Tyne and Wear.
It is being funded by the Department for Transport and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and will bring together a consortium of specialists including experts from five universities.
The project will use pedestrian and buses to act as mobile sensors, collecting real-time air quality data; show how the weather, street design and driving patterns affect the build-up of traffic pollution; look at how large amounts of varied real-time data from many sources is handled; investigate challenges of using data from mobile sensors to measure local environmental factors such as pollutants from vehicles; and develop flexible and re-usable sensors and communications infrastructure to support a wide range of scientific, policy-related and commercial uses and applications for the data.
Transport Minister Stephen Ladyman said: "The Government is committed to supporting research that will help to deliver real benefits in the longer term.
"The project will provide a much better, more detailed picture of the environmental impact of transport, allowing future decisions to be made on the basis of sound scientific evidence.
"We all now live in a data-rich world, and it is important that we have robust methods for handling these data, in real time. This project will enable the development of technologies to manage our transport systems as efficiently and effectively as possible."
