Submitted by GAtherton on 12 October 2015
#Britainbreathing is an exciting new citizen science project that aims to engage a wide range of the UK population to act as ‘citizen sensors’ to help scientists understand more about seasonal allergies such as hay fever or asthma. This is a joint project between the British Society for Immunology, Society of Biology and The University of Manchester.
What is the aim of the project?
Approximately one in four people suffer from seasonal allergies such as hay fever and asthma and this incidence is increasing. Different pollens (such as grass or tree pollens) are active at different times of the year and environmental triggers such as pollution or the weather may also impact on symptoms. The aim of this project is to better understand (both on a national scale and for the individual) when allergy symptoms are occurring and what the triggers for these might be.
How are we going to do this?
We aim to develop a free-to-use app that will allow the public to record their allergy symptoms in a simple and straightforward way and then safely share that data with the project team. This large data set (capturing information on timing and location of allergy symptoms) can then be combined with other publicly available data (such as weather, pollen or pollution statistics) to build a better understanding at a national and personal level of allergy and allergy triggers. From these data, we can build a clearer picture of the pattern and frequency of allergy incidence across the UK.
As this is a citizen science project, we are running initial workshops with members of the public to help inform the project design, in particular the design of the app and best practice in engaging and maintaining citizen participation throughout the project. See images from our first workshop.
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