The corona lockdown had at least a positive effect on the environment. Scientist Thomas Zastrow explains how much the air quality has improved.
Garching - Thomas Zastrow (45), the Garching scientist at the computing center of the Max Planck Society, has long been concerned with the subject of air quality. He records the particulate matter concentration with two of his own sensors, and some of his colleagues are even on the move with mobile sensor devices, such as in the subway. "It confirms that the concentration is very high there." The fine dust is mainly caused by the dust and abrasion on the tracks that are generated in abundance when braking. “In the subway, the load is significantly higher than on the streets,” says Zastrow.
35 measuring stations in eight municipalities
Until September last year, measuring was “only” Zastrow's hobby. Then he found out that the Northern Alliance municipalities with a total of 35 measuring stations in the eight municipalities record the pollutants fine dust, ozone and nitrogen dioxide (we reported). The gray sensor boxes hang on street lamps around four meters high. Zastrow “took care of the matter”, programmed a program that visualized the results. The computer linguist has now fed around 1.3 million data records into his computer, with new ones being added every month. “I've invested a few hours in time,” the hours add up to around 100 hours, “but I don't see that as work,” says Zastrow.
Lockdown "relaxation break for the environment"
For the first analysis, he selected two events that had a particularly large impact on air quality: On New Year's Eve, the rockets caused particulate matter levels to skyrocket. The corona lockdown, on the other hand, had a very good effect on a much better air quality. The dormant car traffic in March meant a visible "break for the environment", in particular the nitrogen dioxide pollution resulting from combustion engines has significantly decreased during this time. Unfortunately, this positive development has now been put into perspective again.
Thomas Zastrow is a scientist at the data center of the Max Planck Society.
© Photo: Sabina
The fact that Zastrow can access the non-personal data is based on the motto “Open Data”. Many cities and municipalities make their data available to citizens, but also to science and industry free of charge. The idea behind it comes from the Internet, where software applications are jointly developed by many volunteers as "open source" projects, such as the Wikipedia online lexicon. After a year of data collection, the Northern Alliance would also like to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the air situation in the eight municipalities. "Making the air quality visible", so the goal of the Northern Alliance, "should help to encourage citizens to get on their bikes more often or to use local public transport."
Overview of all data
The hourly measured values can be queried in real time at www.nordallianz.de/luftqualitaet using a smartphone, tablet or PC. The analyzes can be found at https://luftdaten.thomas-zastrow.de.
BY SABINA BOSCH
