The growing awareness of the international community to climate change and the deterioration of conditions associated with poor air quality led the scientific community to rethink its air quality monitoring policies.
Emissions of air pollutants and consequent air pollution cause a variety of adverse impacts on human health, crops damage, losses of biodiversity, acidification of soils and surface waters, including impacts on buildings and cultural heritage.
Despite significant emissions decrease and air quality improvement in Europe and Portugal over the last decade, ozone and particulate matter atmospheric levels still exceeding EU standards.
Nowadays, environmental monitoring is based on fixed measurement stations containing sophisticated analytical equipment to achieve a high data quality. Due to the high cost of investment and maintenance, only a limited number of pollutants (e.g. CO, NOx, SO2, O3, PM10) are monitored at quite few locations.
The fundamental information available on air quality does not meet the needs of citizens or the requirements of advanced environmental information services, city infrastructure supervision or civil protection management and emergency systems. Emerging low-cost sensor technologies can change this paradigm allowing pollution monitoring with high spatial-temporal resolution available at every person´s fingertips. Environmental information from stationary and mobile sensor networks could be integrated and make available to the public, supported by new Information and communication Technologies. The availability of micro-sensor data promotes a fruitful background for the development of information services addressing personalized citizen needs, as well, as urban planning and management and, decision making requirements.
The main objective of this project is to evaluate the use of reliable air quality micro-sensors and to contribute towards decision-making and civil protection support, based on big data approach.
Due to the location of some micro sensors at local education facilities, we also expect to engage the school community and specific classes (e.g., geography, mathematics) with the project, by means of visiting the pilot station and working with the obtained meteorological and air quality data.
The availability of micro sensor data promotes a fruitful background for the development of information services addressing personalized citizen needs, as well as requirements in urban planning, management and decision-making.