title: Realtime Gas Emission Monitoring at Hazardous Sites Using a Distributed Point-Source Sensing Infrastructure.
abstract: This paper describes a distributed point-source monitoring platform for gas level and leakage detection in hazardous environments. The platform, based on a wireless sensor network (WSN) architecture, is organised into sub-networks to be positioned in the plant's critical areas; each sub-net includes a gateway unit wirelessly connected to the WSN nodes, hence providing an easily deployable, stand-alone infrastructure featuring a high degree of scalability and reconfigurability. Furthermore, the system provides automated calibration routines which can be accomplished by non-specialized maintenance operators without system reliability reduction issues. Internet connectivity is provided via TCP/IP over GPRS (Internet standard protocols over mobile networks) gateways at a one-minute sampling rate. Environmental and process data are forwarded to a remote server and made available to authenticated users through a user interface that provides data rendering in various formats and multi-sensor data fusion. The platform is able to provide real-time plant management with an effective; accurate tool for immediate warning in case of critical events.
authors.affiliation: Department of Information Engineering (DINFO), Università di Firenze, via Santa Marta 3 50139 Firenze, Italy. gianfranco.manes@unifi.it.
authors.forename: Gianfranco
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Manes
authors.affiliation: Department of Information Engineering (DINFO), Università di Firenze, via Santa Marta 3 50139 Firenze, Italy. giovanni.collodi@unifi.it.
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Collodi
authors.affiliation: Eni Spa; Piazzale Enrico Mattei, 1 00144 Roma, Italy. leonardo.gelpi@eni.com.
authors.forename: Leonardo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gelpi
authors.affiliation: Eni Spa; Piazzale Enrico Mattei, 1 00144 Roma, Italy. rosanna.fusco@eni.com.
authors.forename: Rosanna
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fusco
authors.affiliation: Eni Spa; Piazzale Enrico Mattei, 1 00144 Roma, Italy. giuseppe.ricci@eni.com.
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ricci
authors.affiliation: Netsens Srl, via S.Pertini 93 50019 Sesto Fiorentino (Fi), Italy. antonio.manes@netsens.it.
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Manes
authors.affiliation: Department of Information Engineering (DINFO), Università di Firenze, via Santa Marta 3 50139 Firenze, Italy. marco.passafiume@unifi.it.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Passafiume
mesh_terms: D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D005740:Gases / Q000032:analysis*; D020407:Internet; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055549:Volatile Organic Compounds / Q000032:analysis*; D059015:Wireless Technology
chemical_list: D005740:Gases; D055549:Volatile Organic Compounds
keywords: VOC monitoring; photoionization detectors; wireless sensor networks