Associate Professor in Smart Cities & Urban Environment at UCD, Francesco Pilla said: ‘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 concept is simple: with a sensor in combination with a low-cost computer and software, anyone can count the traffic in his or her street. We will be working in close collaboration with all the local communities interested in being involved, to provide them with the tools for hearing their voices’.
Cities currently account for only 1% of the earth’s surface. However, they also account for half of the world’s population, 67% of the global primary energy demand, and 71% of the global energy-related CO2 emissions. Obtaining reliable and updated traffic data is fundamental to understanding the complex links between our urban infrastructure, transport systems and the livability in urban areas. Traffic counts help authorities and scientists make sense of urban mobility and are instrumental to assess its impacts and consequently improve planning.
The WeCount project will carry out five different pilot projects across a number of European cities, Dublin, Cardiff, Leuven, Madrid, Barcelona and Ljubljana. The aim is to quantify local road transport, produce scientific knowledge in the field of mobility and environmental pollution, and devise informed solutions to tackle various road transport challenges. The findings will create new, low-threshold opportunities for transport policy-making and research. More information on the WeCount project is available at https://www.we-count.net/
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