ECO4RUPA: 5G-IoT Inclusive and Intelligent Routing Ecosystem with Low-Cost Air Quality Monitoring

Abstract

The increase and diversity of low-cost air quality (AQ) sensors, as well as their flexibility and low power consumption, offers us the opportunity to integrate them into broad AQ wireless sensor networks, with the aim of enabling real-time monitoring and higher spatial sampling density of pollution in all parts of cities. Considering that the vast majority of the population lives in cities and the increase in respiratory/allergic problems in a large part of the population, it is of great interest to offer services and applications to improve their quality of life by avoiding pollution exposure in their movements in the open air. In the ECO4RUPA project, we focus on this kind of service, proposing an inclusive and intelligent routing ecosystem carried out using a network of low-cost AQ sensors with the support of 5G communications along with official AQ monitoring stations, using spatial interpolation techniques to enhance its spatial resolution. The goal of this service is to calculate healthy walking and/or cycling routes according to the particular citizen’s profile and needs. We provide and analyse the results of the proposed route planner under different scenarios (different timetables, congestion road traffic, and routes) and different user profiles, with a special interest in citizens with asthma and pregnant women, since both have special needs. In summary, our approach can lead to an approximately average reduction in pollution exposure of 17.82% while experiencing an approximately average increase in distance travelled of 9.8%.

AI-IoT Low-Cost Pollution-Monitoring Sensor Network to Assist Citizens with Respiratory Problems

“…Thus, we must stress that with a deployed WSN for AQ monitoring, like the one proposed in [26] and its collected information, we can inform citizens of potential exposure to dangerous pollution levels before they are even being exposed, as well as to help and assist them to plan pollutant-aware routes in order to minimize their impact and exposure to pollution.…”

“…This application is oriented to measure ventilation quality by measuring CO2 levels and T/RH values. Also, applications to estimate and analyze healthy routes for pedestrians and bikers, based on the AQ information gathered by the proposed AQ monitoring network, are shown in [25,26].…”

“…The AQ application designed to assist citizens is shown in [25,26]. This application analyzes, evaluates, and processes the air pollution estimation along a specified route.…”

“…Pollutant-aware route planning: this use case was studied in [26], where we applied the AQ monitoring and spatial statistics to the evaluation of the best routes for air pollution minimization. Also, the use of an AQ forecasting module will help schedule a route previously and select the best route option to minimize exposure.…”