As you probably know, the International Environmental Society of Odour Managers (AMIGO) and a nice bunch of other groups and experts is promoting the development of a new Spanish Standard on odour nuisance mapping through citizen science. Last meeting took place online on the 27th of May, and the first draft of this standard is close to be ready. This would be the first standard on advanced psychometry, dealing with odour mapping by using citizen science to our knowledge.
The roadmap for this initiative is to serve as a first standard on mapping annoyance to drive a wider standardization process at a European scale, and from that go to ISO. It aims also to be a guideline for anyone interested in carrying on a citizen science study focused on odour impact.
The development of this standard has gathered a great group of experts with very different backgrounds, such as citizen science experts, meteorologists, olfactometric laboratories, odour consultants, software developers, public administration, NGOs and waste/wastewater treatment plant managers.
The experts are meeting regularly to come up with a draft. Meanwhile, a campaign have been started by the group to collect the funds necessary to carry out the process of standardization. The cost of standardization goes to a 6.000- 13.000 Euro range for this development. Volunteers and experts are splitting costs and trying to get the money from different sources. However, it is getting a bit difficult on these Covid-19 days.
In the last meeting, the group decided that the AMIGO will be collecting all funds at this stage to help to promote this initiative. If you wish to help this Standard, here you have a donate button. The group will be glad with any economic collaboration. The AMIGO is a non-profit entity dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of the importance of a proper odour management. Donations to AMIGO might be eligible for tax deductions depending on the legislation of your country.
The preliminary title for this Standard is “Collaborative odour maps construction through citizen science”. The index is still been updating and each group is developing each part of the text. Besides, a new task group (TG4) has been created to deal with the terms and definitions.
If you find this article interesting, you might be also interested in these articles:
- Mapping odour? mapping annoyance? Collaborative mapping?
- A new standard on an Annoyance Benchmark?
- 18th of September will take place the 4th meeting of the group dealing with the Spanish standard on odour mapping