Traffic sensors are being installed at homes in five cities across Europe as part of an effort to understand more about traffic flow.

Around 1,500 sensors are planned to be installed at homes in Madrid in Spain, Dublin in Ireland, Cardiff in Wales, Ljubljana in Slovenia and Leuven in Belgium.

The sensors will be installed at homes with clear views of the street and will count the number of passing objects.

The technology will categorise the passerby into either a vehicle, pedestrian or cyclist based on its speed and size.

This project, titled Citizens Observing UrbaN Transport (WeCount), is part of Horizon 2020, a European Commission-funded research project. WeCount commenced in December 2019 and will be carried out for two years.

Professor Enda Hayes, who is carrying out the survey, said: “Our data will be uploaded to the Cloud so it can be seen by anyone, be that private citizen, the local council or NGOs.

“The evidence can be used in a number of initiatives relating to things like speed, noise, air pollution, safety and active travel.”

The gathered data will be updated hourly online. The project is led by emissions expert, Kris Vanherle.

The survey comes in the wake of the death of 500,000 premature babies in Europe in 2018 due to the spike in air pollution levels. The accumulated data is expected to help citizens make informed decisions.

Professor Hayes added: “The sensor components are made by Raspberry Pi, standard hardware that’s available off the shelf. They are powered by a micro USB port.”

The software, which was developed by Transport & Mobility Leuven (TML), connects to the citizen’s home Wi-Fi.