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.
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.
Supporting the aims of Clean Air Day today, 20th June 2019, the Guardian has published a short film demonstrating the changing levels of pollution that children are exposed to as they walk to school in London.
Few people know how clean the air is where they live, work, exercise or where their children go to school. Although air quality can be shown to vary significantly over short distances, air pollution is generally measured using a small number of large, expensive and high quality monitoring stations.
North Americans will be well aware of the particularly harsh weather in the early months of 2019, but AQMesh has taken conditions in its stride. The AQMesh stated operating range of -20°C to + 40°C is backed up by long-term operation across a wide range of climates
In an inter-connected world, air quality is increasingly becoming another measurement made available to the public, but how reliable is the data?
The UK’s first Urban Observatory, led by Newcastle University, has been designed to provide a digital view of how cities work. AQMesh air quality monitoring equipment is being deployed across Newcastle and Gateshead in conjunction with other instruments for monitoring parameters such as air and water quality, noise, weather, energy use, traffic and even tweets.
On Sunday 13th May 2018, Cardiff Council organised a car-free day in the city’s central area. As a result of this event air quality monitoring data showed an average 69% drop in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) – one of the pollutants of greatest public health concern.
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.
The team at AQMesh continue to receive many enquiries from smart city initiatives and are concerned that integrators risk undermining entire projects by distributing meaningless or misleading air quality information.
Cleves School in Weybridge, Surrey (UK) has used AQMesh to measure pollution at the primary school’s entrance. The project, led by Dr. Edward Salter over the school’s summer term, aimed to understand exposure of the children (aged 7-11) to dangerous pollutant gases, with particular interest in the levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3).
Smart city projects pursue the vision of instrumenting a city with a large number of measurement ‘nodes’ and distributing this information to a range of stakeholders. But at that point different priorities emerge: IT teams are attracted by how readily data can be integrated and communicated whilst air quality professionals focus on how meaningful the air quality readings are.
Smart city projects increasingly seek to include air quality measurements. If city authorities and the public are being asked to act based on air quality readings they must be credible. Whilst cheap sensors may offer easily integrated readings, they offer poor value for money if the information they produce cannot be trusted by the public, smart city project managers and stakeholders.
At the RSC AAMG event on ‘Air Quality Monitoring: Evolving Issues and New Technologies’ Professor Rod Jones of the University of Cambridge presented a paper showing very encouraging results.
A new generation of air quality monitors is now being offered to provide localised, real-time air quality readings – but the potential benefit is only just starting to be realised.