2 - Detection of air pollution, air quality monitoring, and control using a wireless sensor network

Abstract

Air pollution is one of the most serious problems in the world, and it can affect lung development and is implicated in the development of emphysema, asthma, and other respiratory diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It refers to the contamination of the atmosphere by harmful chemicals or biologic materials. There is a need to implement air quality management plans to ensure compliance with the pollution limits established by governments and institutions, to improve air quality and reduce the severe health impacts causing millions of deaths worldwide. In the field of odors and air quality, some citizens with simple and readily available equipment are increasingly engaged in collecting and processing heterogeneous data, which have traditionally been collected by authorized sources. Wireless sensor network air pollution monitoring system (WAPMS) uses an air quality index to categories the various levels of air pollution. It also associates meaningful and very intuitive colors to the different categories, so the state of air pollution can be communicated to the user very easily. The major motivation behind our study and the development of the system is to help the government to devise an indexing system to categorize air pollution in Mauritius. The system also uses the air quality index to evaluate the level of health concern for a specific area. The development of smart measuring devices with high accuracy, small size, low cost, and high granularity can complement and/or in some cases replace official networks in their attempt to measure ambient air quality, but with a greater number of measuring points. In this sense, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) play a fundamental role in this approach. The integration of low-cost detection capabilities, machine learning, and wireless networking provides the core component of the WSN concept, which foresees a large number of autonomous sensors, known as “specks” working together to monitor different parameters. In its latest manifestation, the integration of WSNs into the emerging internet of things and fog computing realm would move to the “internet scale” with intelligent sensors from different WSNs collaborating to provide new services over networks that are in turn linked over large areas using the common internet communications infrastructure.