Mobile sensor system for dynamic mapping of air quality in urban environment

The pollution in urban zones is a global emergency that the United Nations addresses in its 2030 sustainable development goals agenda: Goal 13 Climate Action. One flaw in the majority of monitoring systems is that the current type of atmospheric stations is fixed in place, which gives high precision near them, but it decreases with the distance and does not allow for dynamic reposition in response to fluctuations of the atmospheric conditions or in the presence of temporary urban events. To address this problem, the Mobile Atmospheric Data System (MADS) prototype aims to monitor, in real time, a set of physical parameters capable of characterizing the atmosphere of urban areas, while taking advantage of public transportation mobility. The use of a fleet of MADS prototypes to accurately measure data about the air quality enables the appropriate decisions to combat this problem, particularly in an urban context. This is done by measuring temperature, humidity, gas concentrations (CO, NO₂, H₂, NH₃, CH₄, C₂H₅OH, C₃H₈, C₄H₁₀, CO₂), VOC, and PM10 (Particulate Matter with a diameter less than or equal to 10 μm). The technology chosen to implement this solution is based on the Arduino Nano Every microcontroller and a set of sensors compatible with it. After conversion from string into hexadecimal, every MADS module transmits the data through an IoT protocol which is then reconverted into a string format to generate heat-maps of the gas concentrations in the city area. The target customers for this initiative are public entities such as local governments to better organize the cities to diminish pollution, and environmental monitoring organizations to have more quantity and quality of data in urban zones.