Air Quality - Resources on open source low-cost monitoring

General
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Air Quality - Resources on open source low-cost monitoring

This is a place to gather info/links/projects about air quality.
This was a proposed action at GOSH 2018

Table of contents
Introduction
What do big institutions say about air quality and low-cost monitoring?
Scientific reviews of low-cost air quality monitoring
Evaluation of capabilities and performance of low-cost instruments and sensors
Some comments about low-cost sensors
Comercial sensors
Existing open source sensors/platforms
Data standards
Field testing calibration protocols
AQ visualization/Art
GOSH members AQ projects
Citizen science and political ecology readings

Introduction

Here you can find a brief summary and background about stat of the art in AQ monitoring

Here a cognitive map of AQ

(just in spanish for now sorry)

What do big institutions say about air quality and low-cost monitoring?

World Health Organization. Outdoor air quality. Statistics and reports
http://www.who.int/phe/health_topics/outdoorair/en/

World Bank Workshop. 2017. Filling the gap. Improving Measurement of Air Quality in Developing Countries
http://www.worldbank.org/en/events/2017/07/25/filling-the-gaps-improving-measurement-of-air-quality-in-developing-countries-workshop#2.

World Meteorological Organization. Report on low cost sensors.
http://www.ccacoalition.org/en/resources/low-cost-sensors-measurement-atmospheric-composition-overview-topic-and-future

EPA Air Sensor Toolbox. General guidelines for citizens to choose and use aq sensors
https://www.epa.gov/air-sensor-toolbox

Scientific reviews of low-cost air quality monitoring

  • Clements, A.L.; Griswold, W.G.; RS, A.; Johnston, J.E.; Herting, M.M.; Thorson, J.; Collier-Oxandale, A.; Hannigan, M. Low-Cost Air Quality Monitoring Tools: From Research to Practice (A Workshop Summary). Sensors 2017, 17, 2478.
  • Rai, A.C., Kumar, P., Pilla, F., Skouloudis, A.N., Di Sabatino, S., Ratti, C., Yasar, A., Rickerby, D., 2017. End-user perspective of low-cost sensors for outdoor air pollution monitoring. Science of The Total Environment 607-608, 691-705

Evaluation of capabilities and performance of low-cost instruments and sensors

Air Quality Sensor Performance Evaluation Center. Maybe the most complete site of aq sensors performance evaluation. They do field and lab evaluations with reference instruments
http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec

EPA Performance Targets for Air Quality Sensors Workshop (2018). Recent workshop discussing the performance of low-cost sensors for PM and ozone
https://www.epa.gov/air-research/presentations-deliberating-performance-targets-air-quality-sensors-workshop

Overview of Air Quality sensors experiments. Chinese site with lots of info on sensors and also aq data.
http://aqicn.org/sensor/

Old site with info on manufacturers and evaluations reports
www.snuffle.org

Some comments about low-cost sensors

Particulate Matter
PM is the most measured component in outdoors air quality mainly because of its harmful potential and because low-cost PM sensors are much more accurate than gas sensors at the moment.

Gas sensors
There are mainly of two kinds, metal oxide sensors and electrochemical sensors. The first ones are cheaper but they have still lots of issues (ie T and RH interference). Electrochemical sensors are the ones improving faster and have been used in several instruments. They are not so easy to implement and there are some issues of calibration also.

Comercial sensors

Existing open source sensors/platforms

Luftdaten.info

Luftdaten.info
Maybe the most popular open source PM sensor. The standard setup uses the Nova SDS011 but you can use also any Plantower. Easy to build. Big community of users. Data is public.
Some extra details about luftdaten:

hackAIR

https://www.hackair.eu/
Open technology platform that you can use to access, collect and improve air quality information in Europe. They are only measuring PM for the moment
You can follow a tutorial to build a home sensor. Uses the Nova SDS011 PM sensor. Data is public. There are also two other methods to check for PM, an artisanal method and a visual method.

Openaq

https://openaq.org/#/?_k=smqdur
Aggregate physical air quality data from public data sources provided by government, research-grade and other sources. Mainly official sources of data.

Aircasting

http://aircasting.org/
AirCasting is an open-source, end-to-end solution for collecting, displaying, and sharing health and environmental data using your smartphone.The current version of the monitor is Airbeam 2. It uses a Plantower 7003 to measure PM. There are some older versions of the Airbeam that can sense gases

Airquality Egg

https://airqualityegg.com/home
This was maybe the first known open source AQ monitor. Previous versions were used to monitor gases but they had a lot of issues with data quality. The last version uses Plantower 5003 to measure PM.

Data standards

Some already existent data standards:

Field testing calibration protocols

From the European Union European Union (Responsible - M. Gerboles)

From US AQ-SPEC (Responsible - A. Polidori)

AQ visualization/Art

GOSH members AQ projects

Juli - ETER - Buenos Aires @jarancio
Open source Air Quality Monitor for community science.
https://github.com/rlyehlab/eter
It is based on a Plantower 5003 and NodeMCU.

Nano - MACA - Mendoza @nanocastro
Monitor abierto de calidad del aire
www.monitorabierto.wikidot.com
https://gitlab.com/nanocastro/Repo_maca
https://www.madavi.de/sensor/graph.php?sensor=esp8266-16614917-sds011
https://www.madavi.de/sensor/graph.php?sensor=esp8266-4250303-pms

Proyect from Andriy - Ukraine @Andriy
Based on a MiCS-6814 for gases and a Plantower 3003
https://github.com/AndriyHz/Teensy-3.2-and-Thingspeak
https://thingspeak.com/channels/371428

Rachel Hu - Luftdaten - Shenzhen / Hong Kong @RachelH
Luftdaten workshops in SZ and HK
http://www.huodongxing.com/event/9451533598000

Hamilton - Semáforos de polución- Colombia @librepensante.org
http://librepensante.org/

JP? @juanpedro.maestre

Emmanuelle?? @EmmanuelK @Emmanuel

VJpixel ?? @pixel

Other open source AQ monitoring projects

Waag - PM+NO2
https://waag.org/en/project/urban-airq
https://www.atmos-meas-tech.net/11/1297/2018/amt-11-1297-2018.pdf

Medellin - PM - Plantower
http://wiki.unloquer.org/personas/brolin/proyectos/agentes_calidad_aire

Ourairquality - PM - Plantower5003
https://ourairquality.org/ 1

Less-Smog.org - (on Kitspace) - Plantower PMS3003/5003/7003 + HTU21D (Humidity).

Citizen science and political ecology readings

  • Gabrys, J, Pritchard, H, Barratt, B (2016) Just good enough data: figuring data citizenships through air pollution sensing and data stories. Big Data & Society. 3(2): 1-14.
  • Pritchard, H., Gabrys, J., Houston, L., 2018, Re-calibrating DIY: Testing digital participation across dust sensors, fry pans and environmental pollution, New Media & Society, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818777473
  • Nerea Calvillo, 2018, Reclamar el aire, La aventura de aprender, http://laaventuradeaprender.educalab.es/documents/10184/73911/NereaCalvillo_aireD.pdf
  • Calvillo, N. (2014). Sensing Aeropolis. Urban air monitoring devices in Madrid, 2006-2010. Tesis (Doctoral)
  • S.Graham, ‘Life Support: the Political Ecology of Urban Air’, City, 19(2–3), 2015, pp. 192–215.
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Hi all
I’m working on a Shiny app for data retrieval and analisys of Luftdaten sensors.
Here is the starting raw app running https://nanocastro.shinyapps.io/OpenairLuftdaten/
You can find the app.R file in this repo
Feedback and contributions wellcome

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Cool