Project: Sensing the Air

The “Sensing the Air” project emerged as a collaborative initiative between the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and the European CITI-SENSE project, and is based on research collaboration between scientists and the public. The project includes a platform called “Sensing the Air,” which collects air-quality data from monitoring stations across Israel and presents it to the public in a simple and accessible manner.

The “Sensing the Air” project is characterized by diverse models of learning and teaching. Science and geography students investigated a wide range of topics that interested them, for example: comparing air pollution at different heights within a building and across different directions of exposure; examining the influence of the number of vehicles passing at different times of the day on air pollution levels around the school; investigating the impact of Lag BaOmer bonfires on air quality; exploring changes in air quality resulting from cooking or wood-based heating; and examining the effects of slope orientation, among other topics.