How a flock of pigeons fitted with sensors are helping to beat pollution in London

The newest weapon in London's ongoing war on the 'airpocalypse' is a flock of hi-tech feathered friends, says Rosamund Urwin
pigeon patrol
Jon Cartwright/Flickr Select/Getty Images
Rosamund Urwin17 March 2016

Londoners haven’t always been kind to pigeons. Children kick them. Adults employ that Woody Allen “rats with wings” slur, and freak out when they board tube trains. And when he was mayor, Ken Livingstone - aka King Newt – even banned the public from feeding the birds in Trafalgar Square, blaming their droppings for damage to Nelson’s Column. No wonder there’s a Gif of a pigeon nonchalantly declaring “Haters gonna hate”.

We may have been unfair, though. For the least-loved member of the Columbidae family is our new recruit in the capital’s fight against air pollution, an avian ally to help prevent the Airpocalypse. For the next three days 10 pigeons will fly around London, fitted with backpacks that hold sensors monitoring pollution levels. Londoners can then discover the quality of the air where they are by tweeting the @PigeonAir account on the micro-blogging site, and they’ll receive immediate information.

This was all the idea of Pierre Duquesnoy, creative director at the global marketing and technology agency DigitasLBi. He entered this proposal into Powered By Tweets, a competition that Twitter launched last year in conjunction with the London Design Festival to find new ways to use the site. It was one of the winners and ended up featuring in an exhibition at Somerset House.

Duquesnoy, who grew up in Paris and then London, wanted a way to bring air quality to the public’s attention. Thanks in large part to diesel fumes from cars, London has the filthiest air in the country. This pollution is a stealth killer, linked to nearly 9,500 premature deaths a year in the capital, and some seven million worldwide.

“It affects us all but we mostly ignore it,” Duquesnoy says. “Most of the time the conversations about air pollution are highly scientific and it’s quite hard for people like me who are not scientists to understand it all.”

Currently there are 120 stations monitoring air pollution in London but they are in fixed locations. “That means there are blind spots,” Duquesnoy explains. “The stations are really accurate but only for the immediate vicinity, so scientists don’t have a clear idea of what is happening elsewhere. What I wondered was how we can cover some of these blind spots to try to get as much data as possible.”

Duquesnoy was particularly keen to have data for rush hour, when there are not only the most vehicles on the road but lots of commuters cycling, walking and running to work. Initially, he thought about collecting this data from the ground, travelling in a car, by bicycle or by foot but decided it would take too long to traverse the city. The next suggestion was to use drones “but this is prohibited airspace and getting authorisation to fly across London — except for in the parks — is impossible”. So he thought about what doesn’t have its wings clipped with regards to getting about: the pigeon.

At this point, Duquesnoy approached Plume Labs, a tech firm that helps citizens track (and thus reduce) their exposure to air pollution. The two companies teamed up.

“It’s one thing to create the best technology in the world but you need people to understand it,” says Romain Lacombe, the founder and chief executive of Plume Labs. “What’s been missing is an understandable way to access our personal exposure [to air pollution] and advice on what to do about what you’re breathing, Most people don’t know how much pollution changes day by day, but also hour by hour and even street by street.”

Lacombe notes that when people hear about air pollution, they think of Beijing and Delhi, but in Western cities such as London it’s a big problem too. “We are blind to something that is all around us, something that surrounds us every hour of the day but against which to have any protection and reduce our exposure, we have to make the air visible.”

The light pigeon backpacks were sourced from a US firm. Usually they’re worn by pigeons trained to fly along canyons in Utah so that walkers can have photos of their trips ready for when they return. The pollution sensors are stitched into the vests and measure the levels of nitrogen dioxide and ozone.

It takes a special kind of pigeon for this work. “These are professional pigeons,” Duquesnoy says. “They’re very quick racing pigeons, they can fly at 60-80 mph. They live up to 20 years, compared with a street pigeon’s life expectancy of about four years. They’re beautiful birds and far smarter than people think. So we’re turning something that people don’t like into something positive. And people have always used pigeons to communicate, but this is in a very modern way — with Twitter.”

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As the data is being collected, Duquesnoy hopes to “create mass awareness of the scandal that is air pollution”. That’s where Twitter comes in. “It’s one of the best platforms to share information rapidly,” he says. “We have created these three pigeon characters [Coco, Julius and Norbert] to make the subject more accessible. We have to make it serious but a bit funny, to have the right balance.”

Helen Lawrence, head of creative agency development at Twitter UK, adds: “This idea is perfect for Twitter because people tweet with their location and get real-time information back. It’s also fun and exciting and very different. I don’t think we ever expected to use Twitter for this.”

Plume’s first piece of air-pollution technology was a mobile app, the Plume Air Report. “It helps people who suffer with air pollution stay ahead of how the air is going to change,” Lacombe explains. “It tells you what time pollution is going to rise or fall, so you know when to do exercise or go out.”

This app helped to build a community of human air-quality monitors. For three years Plume Labs has also been working with scientists to develop tiny sensors that people will carry with them to track pollution. “This is a huge challenge: how do we make it comfortable for the consumer? There’s a whole host of people who are seeking to understand how much pollution they’re exposed to but they’d only want a device if it’s super-light, efficient and beautiful.”

After the pigeon campaign, Lacombe hopes to recruit people to wear the devices and share the data they collect. But this week it’s the pigeons’ turn. So when you see one of our feathery friends flying above you tonight, just think: they may be helping us all breathe a little easier tomorrow.

Follow Rosamund Urwin on Twitter: @RosamundUrwin

Visit pigeonairpatrol.com to view a live map of the pigeons’ flights and learn more about air pollution

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