Mobile solutions to air quality monitoring

Abstract

Air pollution is one of the most compelling global problems since it poses a serious threat on everyone’s health. Governments and people thus put a premium on the reduction of air pollution in the living environment. Consequently, it draws considerable attention on how to efficiently collect air quality data, especially in cities. In the past, the job of air quality monitoring was usually conducted by installing a few monitoring stations on fixed locations. However, this scheme provides just coarse-grained monitoring, where the resolution of air-quality samplings may be poor. Even worse, it is difficult to move monitoring stations after installation, but the monitoring mission could be often changed. To deal with the problems, many studies propose various mobile solutions to air quality monitoring by equipping gas sensors on mobile devices or vehicles, which allow people to actively and cooperatively detect air pollution in their surroundings. In the chapter, we provide a comprehensive survey of these mobile solutions, and our discussion has four parts. First, we introduce the techniques to evaluate air quality, including an index to report the quality of air and models to predict the dispersion of air pollution. Then, we present the mobile solutions to collect air quality, which can be realized by pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers. Afterward, we discuss how to analyze raw data collected by smartphones, followed by the issue of reporting sensing data collected by cars. Some research directions and challenges for future mobile solutions to air quality monitoring will be also addressed in the chapter.