Implementation of an Open Hardware and Web Platform for Citizen Science Air Quality Monitoring

Air quality monitoring (AQM) systems have been on the rise in recent years, but implementations are still constrained because the public has limited capability and resources to construct and configure these. As such, data points have been limited and inaccessible, lessening involvement and urgency for air pollution problems. This study developed an Open-Source AQM system consisting of an open hardware node and a web platform. The hardware was tested and deployed to check the air quality of its surroundings. Results show that the designed hardware was able to measure the chosen parameters for monitoring and the data uploaded can be viewed using the user's account on the web platform. The citizens can be contributors to data gathering by creating their own accounts on the web platform and building their own hardware node following the given design specifications. The effectiveness of the system as an open-source and citizen science project are also discussed in this paper.