Toward On-Demand Urban Air Quality Monitoring using Public Vehicles

Abstract

For protecting the public health, many research groups have tried to capture dense air quality information using sensorized vehicles that travel within urban areas. However, it remains difficult to accumulate real-time and fine-grained air quality information to fulfill a wide variety of requests from citizens and authorities. In this paper, we propose on-demand urban air quality monitoring using public vehicles. By adapting the monitoring behavior of sensors to each city's individual's needs, smart cities can accumulate enough air quality information with just a few sensorized vehicles. This paper describes the mechanisms of remote update programs on sensor nodes mounted on public vehicles for on-demand monitoring. We adopted the mechanisms on sensorized public vehicles in Fujisawa City, Japan. The paper also reports our air quality monitoring field trial and describes a functional design for on-demand air quality monitoring.