Switzerland to equip buses, trams with air quality sensors

Filed under: Etc., Transportation Alternatives, Europe/EU

Here's a novel idea: rather than installing air quality sensors in fixed locations, why not use mobile sensors to collect data in an evenly spread-out area?

OpenSense, a project run by EPFL, a federally funded institute of technology located in Switzerland, and ETH Zurich, a science and technology university in Zurich, Switzerland, aims to study the feasibility of installing sensors on the roofs of buses and trams, thus taking advantage of existing public transportation vehicles to form an extensive network of mobile air quality data collection sites.

OpenSense describes the potential benefits of its project like this:

Using the data from these sensors, a person with asthma would know what time of day the pollution was at its lowest in the neighborhood, and thus pick this moment do his or her shopping, for example. Parents would know where to take their children to play on a summer day, because they would be aware of zones with low ozone concentrations.

OpenSense designed air quality sensors that aren't affected by motion or severe climates. These sensors will transmit data over a network that can be accessed by the public using mobile phones. As a test, sensors were installed on the roof of a bus in Lausanne and on a tram in Zurich. These devices are currently collecting and transmitting atmospheric data. The next task is for the Nokia Research Center in Lausanne to develop a smartphone app equipped with an air quality warning system.

[Source: TreeHugger, EPFL | Image: EPFL]

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Switzerland to equip buses, trams with air quality sensors originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Sun, 10 Jul 2011 17:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://green.autoblog.com/2011/07/10/switzerland-to-equip-buses-trams-with-air-quality-sensors/

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