Noticed an wrongly configured or possibly wrongly placed detector, what can be done?

Hello all.

I was looking through the open data platform of the RIVM (Samen Meten - Dataportaal - note, it’s in Dutch) in the Netherlands for data near my house. Now I got a little surprised about a certain value, and that ended up in me getting here.

The relevant sensor number is 22768 (at the RIVM site it has the ID LTD_13001) at the Veerpolderstraat, Arnhem, the Netherlands. The PM 2,5 value topped out yesterday evening at 1808 according to the data the RIVM keeps at 20:00 local time (current slightly past 06:00 local time), dropped a bit after that and then at 02:00 rose back up 1583 while it’s now drop back to around 122.

Similarly the PM 10 values are apparently at 119 currently, with low (according to the RIVM) as low as 97 and highs as high as yesterday of 1102.

Those values don’t make a lot of sense. To make it a bit more clear, the detector is in an residential area, with 300 meters away the Rhine (once every 20 minutes or so a ship gets past there at the current time) and downwind from a somewhat major bridge in the area. I just don’t get it.

Now compare it with a detector 500-750 meters away at the Boterbloemstraat, Arnhem, the Netherlands. ID 73439 (RIVM ID LTD_61665). Current PM 10 is 6, with PM 2,5 2. This is also in the midst of a residential area, and it’s close to a pretty busy road during rush hour. That one behaves mostly as expected in comparison. While it also tops out around 22:00 and then goes down during the night for PM 10, it settles between 5 as a low and the high of the entire past week was 49. Something similar for PM 2,5 is a low of 1 and a high of 46. Way different figures from whatever gets reported by the one at the Veerpolderstraat. And when I look at others further out, they’re in line with the Boterbloemstraat.

Now my question is, what can be done about this? Can I find out who has placed the one at the Veerpoldersstraat and contact them, or how does it exactly work here when it comes to stuff like this?

Welcome on board! It is nice to know people reach here through Samen Maten.

With such a number the sensor should be quite old.
Maybe it is near a heater exhaust. It can happen.

We can do nothing because for privacy reasons, we swore we will not send messages to the people.
Maybe we can implement a filter.

Okay, thanks - good to know.