Abstract
The Region of Waterloo is the third fastest growing region in Southern Ontario in Canada with a population of 619,000 as of 2019. However, only one air quality monitoring station, located in a city park in Kitchener, Ontario, is currently being used to assess the air quality of the region. In September 2020, a network of AQMesh Multisensor Mini Monitoring Stations (pods) were installed near elementary schools in Kitchener located near different types of emission source. Data analysis using a custom-made long-distance scaling software showed that the levels of nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2), ground level ozone (O3), and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) were traffic related. These pollutants were used to calculate the Air Quality Health Index-Plus (AQHI+) at each location, highlighting the inability of the provincial air quality monitoring station to detect hotspot areas in the city. The case study presented here quantified the impact of the 2021 summer wildfires on the local air quality at a high time resolution (15-min). The findings in this article show that these multisensor pods are a viable alternative to expensive research-grade equipment. The results highlight the need for networks of local scale air quality measurements, particularly in fast-growing cities in Canada.
Highlights
Pollutant emissions in urban communities remain a major concern among government bodies worldwide
Once slope and offset values are found using the regional data set for each pod, as linearity of response from the sensor is expected across the full range, these scaling values can be applied to the whole PreScaled data set which includes both hyper local and regional responses
The effect of sunlight/irradiance on NO2 levels in selected sites in Southern Ontario including Kitchener is shown in Figure S4 in the Supplementary Information of reference [23]. These findings indicate that Kitchener has relatively ‘low pollution’ with respect to NO2 levels, which are nearly half those measured in Toronto located 105 km away [23]
Summary
Pollutant emissions in urban communities remain a major concern among government bodies worldwide. In July of 2018, the Breathe London Blueprint project was launched in London, UK, which aimed at providing a hyperlocal air quality monitoring network with a real time map of ambient pollution across the city [13]. This project was the largest air quality monitoring network launched to date and consisted of over 100 multisensor pods developed by AQMesh and deployed across the city. The data collected were compelling regarding the need to reduce pollutant emissions in the city over decades of gradual change This project inspired France, China, and the United States to launch similar air quality monitoring networks in their highly polluted regions [14,15].
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