title: A low-cost sensing system for cooperative air quality monitoring in urban areas.
abstract: Air quality in urban areas is a very important topic as it closely affects the health of citizens. Recent studies highlight that the exposure to polluted air can increase the incidence of diseases and deteriorate the quality of life. Hence, it is necessary to develop tools for real-time air quality monitoring, so as to allow appropriate and timely decisions. In this paper, we present uSense, a low-cost cooperative monitoring tool that allows knowing, in real-time, the concentrations of polluting gases in various areas of the city. Specifically, users monitor the areas of their interest by deploying low-cost and low-power sensor nodes. In addition, they can share the collected data following a social networking approach. uSense has been tested through an in-field experimentation performed in different areas of a city. The obtained results are in line with those provided by the local environmental control authority and show that uSense can be profitably used for air quality monitoring.
authors.affiliation: Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Largo Lucio Lazzarino 1, 56122 Pisa, Italy. simone.brienza@for.unipi.it.
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brienza
authors.affiliation: Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Largo Lucio Lazzarino 1, 56122 Pisa, Italy. galli@andrea.si.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Galli
authors.affiliation: Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Largo Lucio Lazzarino 1, 56122 Pisa, Italy. giuseppe.anastasi@unipi.it.
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Anastasi
authors.affiliation: Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Via G. Caruso 16, 56122 Pisa, Italy. paolo.bruschi@unipi.it.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bruschi
mesh_terms: D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D002947:Cities; D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000191:economics / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D052638:Particulate Matter / Q000032:analysis; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D059015:Wireless Technology / Q000191:economics / Q000295:instrumentation*
chemical_list: D000393:Air Pollutants; D052638:Particulate Matter
keywords: air quality monitoring; cooperative system; participatory sensing; urban sensing