Developing Reliable Air Quality Monitoring Devices with Low Cost Sensors: Method and Lessons Learned

ABSTRACT

Rapid advancements in avordable, miniaturised air pollution sensor technologies over the potential to capture the high variability of personal exposure to air pollution during daily life with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. However, concerns remain regarding the suitability of these novel technologies for scientifc and policy purposes due to their lack of reliability. On the other hand, large national networks that allow for the reporting of temporal variations in pollutant concentrations do not provide adequate spatial and temporal coverage and have very high price. The aim of this work is the development of a common architecture of three types of highly-reliable, portable air quality devices using low-cost sensors. The devices monitor particulate matter, diverential pressure and outdoor emissions (CO;CO2 ;O3 and VOCs) with high reliability and at a high temporal and spatial resolution while communicating measurements to the cloud in real time. This combination of features makes it possible to answer new questions about the underlying causes of poor air quality, ensure more accurate modelling and prediction at local scales, improve the ability to identify the links between air quality and human health or environmental degradation, identify potential air pollution \hot spots", and enhance the ability to quantify the impacts of pollutant mitigation techniques. The methodological approach followed in this paper is to develop at a high TRL level a exible, modular hardware platform, delay and fault-tolerant middleware components and data-centric cloud services that together ensure reliability in all three places: at the sensor level, the device/edge level and at the cloud. Furthermore, devices are remotely confgurable to reduce the maintenance burden from their deployment in real-time scenarios. To validate the usefulness of the devices in an industrial context, eighteen instances were deployed for eighteen months in a modern dairy plant and they were successful in contributing to checking conformance with health&safety guidelines, monitoring negative room pressure and discovering systematic sources of pollution thus protecting the personnel and the products.

KEYWORDS

low-cost sensors, air quality monitoring, internet of things, raspberry pi, arduino, wireless sensor networks, delay tolerant networking, middleware, publish/subscribe, industry

Cite this paper

Eleftheria Katsiri. (2021) Developing Reliable Air Quality Monitoring Devices with Low Cost Sensors: Method and Lessons Learned. International Journal of Environmental Science, 6, 425-444