WeCount: Citizens Observing UrbaN Transport

WeCount aims to empower citizens to take a leading role in the production of data, evidence and knowledge around mobility in their own neighborhoods, and at street level.

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Description

WeCount aims to empower citizens to take a leading role in the production of data, evidence and knowledge around mobility in their own neighbourhoods, and at street level. The project will follow participatory citizen science methods to co-create and use innovative low cost, automated, road traffic counting sensors (i.e. Telraam) and multi-stakeholder engagement mechanisms in 5 pilots in Madrid, Ljubljana, Dublin, Cardiff and Leuven. Following this approach, we will be able to quantify local road transport (cars, large vehicles, active travel modes and speed), produce scientific knowledge in the field of mobility and environmental pollution, and co-design informed solutions to tackle a variety of road transport challenges.

Moreover, the project will provide cost-effective data for local authorities, at a far greater temporal and spatial scale than what would be possible in classic traffic counting campaigns, thereby opening up new opportunities for transportation policy making and research.

The WeCount Project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 872743.

Basic information

Coordinator

Transport & Mobility Leuven NV, https://www.tmleuven.be/

Partners

Transport & Mobility Leuven NV – https://www.tmleuven.be/
Ideas for Change – https://www.ideasforchange.com/
University of the West of England, Bristol – https://www1.uwe.ac.uk/about.aspx
University College Dublin – https://www.ucd.ie/
University of Ljubljana – https://www.uni-lj.si/
Mobiel 21 – https://www.mobiel21.be/
Polis – https://www.polisnetwork.eu/

Programme

Horizon 2020 (programme-horizon-2020)

Project Acronym

Target groups

education authorities, general public, policy makers, researchers, secondary school students, teachers, trainee teachers, university students, university lecturers, other

Topic

Computer science, Earth science, Ecology, Energy, Engineering, Environmental sciences, Technology, Education, Other

Start year

2019

End year

2021

Url

https://we-count.net/

Contact person

Kris Vanherle, kris.vanherle@telraam.net
Claudia Ribeiro, CRibeiro@polisnetwork.eu

WeCount aims to change the way transport scientists and policy researchers collect traffic counting and traffic impact data with the integration of citizens into transport monitoring and translate these into practical policy messages.

WeCount aims to go beyond the state-of-the-art on the following aspects of citizen science:

Achieve a true breakthrough by making citizen-collected traffic data and subsequent impact data, of different types (speed, traffic volume, modal split, air quality), relevant and “unignorable” for local policymakers. There are currently a variety of citizen activities related to local traffic concerns; however, these fail to make a true impact as the data collection effort lacks the structure, accuracy and/or scope to make results relevant for scientists and researchers. By using a platform and approach that is built by traffic engineers, WeCount aims to change that by offering tools (“recipes and ingredients”) that allow citizens to collect traffic data in a systematic way so they are actually usable at low cost for the transport scientist and policy research community.
WeCount aims to drastically reduce the cost of collecting traffic counting data (factor 3 to 5), by involving citizens in the data collection process, leading to traffic counting data for road segments where currently this data is typically unavailable.
WeCount aims to provide evidence at an unprecedented level of spatial detail of the link between traffic and air pollution.
Building on citizen science guidelines and knowledge, WeCount’s ambition is to build a durable and scalable citizen science “ecosystem” that will lead organically to new activities beyond the 5 use cases in the project, using the approach, technology and platform of WeCount. We aim for a WeCount process that is generalized to such an extent that setting up new local citizen science communities beyond the 5initial use cases is easy and possible without the additional support of the initiators of WeCount (i.e. the project team).
As it should be in 2019, we are making a major effort to involve disadvantaged groups in the various pilots. Cultural, linguistic and knowledge differences should not be a barrier to start actions to improve the quality of life and air quality.
WeCount wants to create talented citizen scientists, nurture local champions and empower citizen activism.

WeCount: Citizens Observing UrbaN Transport

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