City Wide Participatory Sensing of Air Quality

Abstract

Air pollution is a contributor to approximately one in every nine deaths annually. Air quality monitoring is being carried out extensively in urban environments. Currently, however, city air quality stations are expensive to maintain resulting in sparse coverage and data is not readily available to citizens. This can be resolved by city-wide participatory sensing of air quality fluctuations using low-cost sensors. We introduce new concepts for participatory sensing: a voluntary community-based monitoring data forum for stakeholders to manage air pollution interventions; an automated system (cyber-physical system) for monitoring outdoor air quality and indoor air quality; programmable platform for calibration and generating virtual sensors using data from low-cost sensors and city monitoring stations. To test our concepts, we developed a low-cost sensor to measure particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide (CO), and ozone (O3) with GPS. We validated our approach in Helsinki, Finland, with participants carrying the sensor for 3 months during six data campaigns between 2019 and 2021. We demonstrate good correspondence between the calibrated low-cost sensor data and city’s monitoring station measurements. Data analysis of their personal exposure was made available to the participants and stored as historical data for later use. Combining the location of low cost sensor data with participants public profile, we generate proxy concentrations for black carbon and lung deposition of particles between districts, by age groups and by the weekday.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Air Pollution Monitoring: A Survey

“…They have been used, for example, with urban infrastructure (e.g., light poles and public transportation vehicles) to capture air pollutants sourced from traffic and vehicle emissions [43], [44], or by maritime authorities to detect ships that violate international standards limiting the maximum sulfur content in marine fuel [45]. Moreover, due to their low weight, mobile sensors can also be carried by citizens for detecting air pollution hotspots in cities [3], [46].…”

Sampling Trade-Offs in Duty-Cycled Systems for Air Quality Low-Cost Sensors

“…Low-cost sensors in air pollution: the use of low-cost sensors for air pollution monitoring has been the subject of study during the last few years [ 6 , 23 ]. These sensors provide a cost-effective alternative to complementing measurements from high-cost government-deployed instrumentation.…”

Sampling Trade-Offs in Duty-Cycled Systems for Air Quality Low-Cost Sensors

“…Low-cost sensors in air pollution: the use of low-cost sensors for air pollution monitoring has been the subject of study during the last few years [11], [19], [20]. These sensors provide a cost-effective alternative to complement measurements from high-cost government-deployed instrumentation.…”