Environmental data from the North Sea to Bavaria

More than 100 of the small green boxes are already in use: whether in Hamburg, or Zwolle in the Netherlands, or even on the Zugspitze in Bavaria - the "SenseBox" has long since left its hometown of Münster behind it. The toolkit for stationary and mobile sensors, developed by Geoinformatics specialists at Münster, is being used by non-specialists in a lot of places to measure environmental data,- and the number of measuring stations is set to rise substantially. The German Ministry of Education and Science (BMBF) is now providing 960,000 euros of funding for the project for three years. The project is Prof. Angela Schwering from the Institute for Geoinformatics at the University of Münster. It's not only private households that are using the boxes, but also - and in particular - school laboratories and museums. "What's really important to us," says Thomas Bartoschek, who is heading the project jointly with Angela Schwering, "is that people should become involved in science through so-called citizen science projects - in other words, do measuring themselves and ask questions of their own. And the 'SenseBox' - which is also available in a version for school classes - is just the thing for that." With minimal effort, anyone can construct their own measuring station from the assembly kit.