Challenger - ZMOD4510 - Outdoor Air Quality Sensor
Measuring The Personalized Exposures to Air Pollution (+ Integrating Health Advice)
Hello element14 Family,
Due to the start of my semester and the ensuing course load (and a delay in the shipment), I was finally able to work on the challenge now. I sincerely apologize for the delay!
The blog series will consist of the following posts:
1). Introduction
2). System Architecture
3). Hardware Interfacing
4). Data Acquisition
5). Conclusion & Further Directions – Multi Sensor Fusion
Human health, productivity, and comfort are all affected by air pollution. When people engage in outdoor activities, atmospheric contaminants can lead to respiratory problems. The degree to which air pollution affects humans is measured in terms of exposure, which depends on the concentration of the different pollutants and the duration of exposure. Correspondingly, there are a wide variety of effects attributed to the short-term and long-term exposure to contaminants.
The AQI is determined by the EPA for the five main air pollutants included by the Clean Air Act: particulate matter, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. The following table lists the AQI for each pollutant from the EPA with exposure durations of one hour, eight hours, and twenty-four hours.
The Common Air Quality Index (CAQI), which was first developed in 2006 as part of the CITEAIR project, allows for real-time comparison of the air quality in European cities (quite pertinent because of my current geographic location).
Although there are static air pollution monitoring stations in cities, they are quite sporadically deployed, thus crowdsourced air pollution sensing is also gaining significant interest. Personalized environment sensing is vital for quantitative investigations, such as determining one's personal exposure, because of the significant geographical heterogeneity of contaminants.
Therefore, it is crucial that people have access to equipment that can offer accurate measurements of their exposure to air pollution and personalized medical advice. Thus, a portable platform for exposure capture will be built using the ZMOD4510 Outdoor Air Quality Sensor. Additionally, human emissions may contribute some nonlinearity into such measurements, which the experiments will attempt to better understand.
References: Tables & Definitions: Outdoor Air Quality, Dr. Christian Meyer and Heidi Teran Pradilla, Renesas Electronics Corporation, March, 2020
Next Blog Series: Summer of Sensors Design Challenge - In The Air Tonight – Blog #2 (System Design)