D-NOSES stands for Distributed Network for Odour Sensing Empowerment and Sustainability (not to be confused with e-noses). This project has got a budget of 3.2 million Euro from the project Horizon 2020 of the European Union. The kick-off meeting just took place last week in London. A group of several companies, research universities, public administrations and NGOs will participate in this project to develop a tool for citizen odour monitoring.
A consortium of 15 entities will participate in this H2020 project that will take 3 years. The project will co-design citizen science interventions across 7 European and 3 non-European countries, where citizens will use innovative mapping tools to crowdsource odour issues and co-create ad-hoc solutions with CSOs, NGOs, local public authorities, odour emitting industries and academia.
Odour pollution is the second reason for citizens’ complaints after noise, across Europe. Frequent exposure to odour is associated with headache, stress and respiratory problems. Odour nuisance is an indicator of larger environmental issues, such as poor waste management or polluted water. Yet, odour pollution has repeatedly been ignored in environmental regulations leaving citizens defenceless. Due to the lack of regulation, situated technical studies are rarely conducted and data and statistics on odour pollution are scarce or difficult to access. D-NOSES aims to provide a solution to this largely neglected problem by reversing the way in which odour pollution is commonly tackled.
The approach of the group participating in the project is to empower citizens with RRI, citizen science and co-creation tools to become drivers of change. D-NOSES promotes a quadruple helix model that will be applied at local, national and global levels. Through the International Odour Observatory, access to information in odour pollution will be provided.
Advocacy actions, together with project results, such as DIY Guidelines for project replicability, scientific guidelines for policy making and The Green Paper on Odour Pollution, will be used as policy tools with the ultimate aim of introducing odour pollution in the policy agenda.
A ‘Strategic Roadmap on Odour Pollution’ will pave the way for bottom-up, multi-level governance for increased sustainability in the medium to long term. To address D-NOSES aims, a world-class partnership have been assembled combining experts in RRI, citizen science and co-creation, International Associations, odour scientists, including universities and SMEs, local administration and public bodies from 9 countries.
The project will be coordinated by the foundation Ibercivis, represented by Ms. Rosa Arias. We alredy mentioned this organization in the past when we spoke about the OdourCollect app. This application for smartphones made available to the citizens a tool to report nuisance due to odours by filling a simple questionnaire. At the same time, the users could participate by analysing the available data or accesing the historic record of data. The app that the D-NOSES project pretends to develop will take the Odour Collect as starting point and will develop more capablities upon it.
The International Association of Odour Managers will take part in this consortium and will use their extensive network of professionals and companies to support the work of the group in several aspects. Other well-known participants in this project are the University of Kassel in Germany and the Politechnical University of Milan.
