Weather Sensing in an Urban Environment with the Use of a UAV and WebRTC-Based Platform: A Pilot Study.

Agnieszka Chodorek,Alexander Yastrebov,Robert Ryszard Chodorek

doi:10.3390/s21217113

Agnieszka Chodorek, Alexander Yastrebov + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/s21217113

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Abstract

Thanks to IoT, Internet access, and low-cost sensors, it has become possible to increase the number of weather measuring points; hence, the density of the deployment of sources that provide weather data for the needs of large recipients, for example, weather web services or smart city management systems, has also increased. This paper presents a flying weather station that carries out measurements of two weather factors that are typically included in weather stations (ambient temperature and relative humidity), an often included weather factor (atmospheric pressure), and a rarely included one (ultraviolet index). In our solution, the measurements are supplemented with a visual observation of present weather phenomena. The flying weather station is built on a UAV and WebRTC-based universal platform proposed in our previous paper. The complete, fully operational flying weather station was evaluated in field studies. Experiments were conducted during a 6-month period on days having noticeably different weather conditions. Results show that weather data coming from the flying weather station were equal (with a good approximation) to weather data obtained from the reference weather station. When compared to the weather stations described in the literature (both stationary weather stations and mobile ones), the proposed solution achieved better accuracy than the other weather stations based on low-cost sensors.

Highlights

In the smart city concept, weather data from devices equipped with appropriate sensors—such as smartphones, cars, etc.—can be collected to complement information coming from classic, stationary weather stations
This section describes the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and WebRTC based universal framework, discusses the possibility of using this framework as a platform for building a flying weather station, discusses the weather factors selected to be measured by the flying weather station, presents sensors that will be used to measure these factors, and discusses the aspects of the observations of present weather
The results of measurements of four weather factors carried out by the weather station were compared with the corresponding results obtained with the use of reference devices

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. In the smart city concept, weather data from devices equipped with appropriate sensors—such as smartphones, cars, etc.—can be collected to complement information coming from classic, stationary weather stations. The high density of such ad-hoc-created weather stations and their mobility support provide high-density spatio-temporal weather data. This is the greatest advantage of this approach, especially in light of the shortdistance validity (from less than one meter to hundreds of meters) of weather information gathered in the urban canopy layer [1]. The disadvantages are as follows: relatively low trustworthiness of the crowdsourced data [2], unknown accuracy of measurements, and uneven density of weather data sources (very dense in crowded places and during rush hours and sparse in rarely visited places)

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Results

Conclusion