The first face-to-face meeting and fourth meeting in total of the group dealing with a new Spanish standard on the use of psychometry to map odours took place in Barcelona in September. A group of 10 experts met to discuss this new text that hopefully will become a new standard, but how is going to be named the text? Mapping odour? mapping annoyance? Collaborative mapping?
This group is taking another step on traditional psychometry using citizen observations to try to take a photo of the odour impact in a certain area with alternative tools. In this case, instead of using surveys, diaries or performing personal interviews, the maps are being made dynamically by using an app that print time and location of an odour observation.
This standard will start upon existing psychometric standards, such as the German VDI 3883 (parts 1 to 4) or the odour guideline from New Zealand in its last edition from 2016. This standard will use techniques such as citizen science, or other engagement techniques in order to produce a map.
After a short introduction of the experts and their expectations on this new text, the work of the group was divided in three task groups:
- Participation and transparency (engagement)
- Methodology (formal structure of the method to compile data)
- Data plausabiility checks (with meteorology or retrotrajectories)
Task group leaders were assigned for each of the task groups and a new face-to-face meeting was scheduled in Tarragona, the 15th of January. Everyone is welcome to join in in this fascinating development. For more info, you may contact (in Spanish) the coordinator of the group Jose Manuel Felisi here.
If you find this article interesting, you might be also interested in these articles:
- 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
- Psychometry
- OLORES19 Conference, 26-27 November 2019, Santiago, Chile
