Each time we think we have found a spectacularly remote air quality monitoring location, an even more inaccessible spot is reported by one of our users. Full-day trips to visit a location have now been beaten by customers who need to charter a plane to reach them. So, remote diagnostics and support are very important.
We are often asked by customers whether AQMesh can operate in cold conditions. Long-term use at temperatures well below freezing, with ice and snowfall, is indeed challenging.
A UK local authority installed nine AQMesh systems at different points across a busy town, measuring nitrogen dioxide (NO2) at 15 minute intervals, monitoring 24/7. These locations were established monitoring points, where measurements had been taken previously using diffusion tubes, limited to one average reading every few weeks.
Anybody in the market for purchasing a small sensor air pollution monitoring system will need to consider budgets, but it’s not always obvious how the products being reviewed actually compare across their full operational life.
Autonomous power can make all the difference in hyper-local air quality monitoring. With particulate matter sampling needing a little more power than passive gas sensors, solar is the go-to power option, rather than internal battery. Most systems require sufficiently little energy that they can be powered by a relatively small solar panel, but it’s the back-up power management that makes all the difference.
It’s great to see the team at the Department of Atmospheric Chemistry, University of Cambridge using their AQMesh pods for another project, this time in Lagos, Nigeria and Yaoundé, Cameroon.
AQMesh is being used in an innovative intelligent pedestrian crossing system being developed by three collaborators across Italy, Israel and Spain.
AQMesh Product Manager, Tom Townend, will be presenting at the EPA 2023 Air Sensors Quality Assurance Workshop on Wednesday 26th July at 1pm ET (6pm BST). He will be speaking about our project in Minneapolis and quality control of large sensor networks measuring total volatile organic compounds (TVOC).
AQMesh is being used as part of the newly revived Breathe Easy Dallas initiative – a project designed to measure and understand air pollution at neighbourhood level.
Researchers at Newcastle & Northumbria Universities have published the report on their study which used AQMesh to measure air quality around schools in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
A recent study using a network of five AQMesh pods has found that small sensor systems with a properly managed QA/QC process offer valuable air quality measurements, complementing data from expensive reference equipment.
Five AQMesh air quality monitoring pods are currently installed around Keflavic airport in Iceland to monitor gases produced by the nearby volcano at Fagradalsfjall, including hydrogen sulphide (H2S), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2).
Two AQMesh pods measuring airborne particulate matter have been loaned to the University of Cambridge, ahead of the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, to support research into measurement of particulate matter.
The Breathe London pilot, which used 100 AQMesh pods as part of a ground breaking city-wide network of air quality monitoring stations, proved that small sensor monitoring technology can be deployed successfully to give results comparable with those of reference equipment.
Whilst there may be a growth in city-wide communications integration, “big data” and public interest in local air quality, the challenges of monitoring complex atmospheric chemistry have not changed. Integrating “sensors” can sound straightforward but information about air quality around a city must be handled carefully.
Air quality is rarely out of the news and there are many initiatives in this field, from developments around conventional monitoring to IoT and smart city initiatives.
The Breathe London project has this week released a 3D data visualisation story created by the Environmental Defense Fund Europe and Google.
Four AQMesh pods are to be deployed at individual remote monitoring locations near schools in Kitchener, forming a small network to measure levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) and carbon dioxide (CO2). A fifth one will be co-located with the provisional air quality monitoring station.
Breathe London preliminary analysis results reveal substantial NO2 pollution reductions after the UK government implemented restrictions to reduce the spread of Covid-19, particularly after social distancing was strongly encouraged on 16 March
Technology is critical to so many essential services during the current global COVID-19 crisis, but it is also allowing local air quality to continue to be monitored, in real-time, across the world.
Several years ago wrote an article about the challenges and benefits of local air quality monitoring and it continues to be our most regularly read item on our website. However the ‘small sensor’ air quality monitoring world has moved on during the last three years and we have identified several new challenges and benefits relating to the continual development of air quality monitoring technology.
The Breathe London project has been announced as the winner of a SMART 50 Award by Smart Cities Connect, within the Digital Transformation category. Created to better understand Londoners’ exposure to air pollution, Breathe London combines state-of-the-art technology with new data analytics, delivering real-time air quality data at a hyperlocal level in the city.
A network of sensors has been set up in Newcastle in order to give policymakers a more accurate picture of the air being breathed by children.
Last month Environmental Defense Fund Europe (EDFE) together with Mayor Sadiq Khan are releasing the second wave of data from Breathe London, an ambitious collaborative project to measure and map air pollution across the capital.
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has been monitoring Minnesota’s air quality for a number of years, and it is generally considered to be good. However, MPCA wanted to understand how air pollution varies across small distances in order to minimise vulnerable communities’ exposure to harmful pollutants.
Detailed information on London’s (UK) air pollution is now being published on breathelondon.org, the website for a new collaborative project to paint a clearer picture of the city’s air quality.
Following a successful evaluation phase in 2018, AQMesh small sensor air quality monitoring ‘pods’ have been selected for use in a project to control the ventilation of a road tunnel in the city of Marseille.
Suite à une phase d’évaluation et en raison de sa qualité de mesure, la solution AQMesh a été sélectionnée dans le cadre d’un projet d’asservissement de la ventilation d’un tunnel routier dans la ville de Marseille.
In an inter-connected world, air quality is increasingly becoming another measurement made available to the public, but how reliable is the data?
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has launched a new, street-by-street monitoring system that will help to improve that capital’s air quality. From July 2018, and operating for a year, London will benefit from what is being described as the world’s most sophisticated air quality monitoring system.
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has purchased fifty AQMesh pods to measure key air pollution gases and particulate matter across fifty different zip code areas.