Air Quality Monitoring
Improving quality of life through smart air quality monitoring
As air pollution threatens the health and quality of life of people in urban areas around the world, cities are adopting smart air quality monitoring solutions that can help to better understand and manage air quality and communicate important health information to citizens.
Smart air quality monitoring systems use Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to gather and send data about areas of high pollution, types of contaminants in the air, changes over time and the likely sources of pollution. Sensors may be mounted on existing infrastructure throughout the city, giving city managers real-time data about air quality in every neighborhood. Air pollution monitoring sensors may also be mounted on vehicles, attached to bikes or – as in the City of London – attached to pigeons to monitor air quality at different locations and altitudes throughout the city.
The data collected by this vast network of sensors for environmental monitoring can help cities to better understand the problems they face, and to take steps to enact policy and adopt technology to improve the quality of air their citizens breathe.
The benefits of air quality monitoring
By adopting a smart air quality monitoring system, cities can:
- Protect and improve public health. With millions of people dying prematurely each year as a result of air pollutioni, air quality monitoring technology is critical to the effort to reduce pollutants and to provide residents with the information they need to protect themselves.
- Ensure compliance with environmental regulation. Air quality monitoring enables accurate and timely detection of changes in levels of pollutants that can help cities take action to prevent violation of environmental protection laws such as the Clean Air Act.
- Prevent disasters.With air quality monitoring sensors positioned pervasively throughout neighborhoods –and especially in industrial settings –cities are more likely to get early warning of potential industrial leaks that could result in threats to public health.
Air quality monitoring technology can be combined with other smart technologies for dust monitoring, temperature monitoring and water quality monitoring to give cities a comprehensive understanding of the quality of natural resources and the actions required to protect them.
How Spectrum Enterprise supports smart air quality monitoring technology
As with all smart technologies like smart traffic systems and smart electrical grids, data collected from air quality monitoring sensors must be transmitted back to city servers via a high-performance network, where it is evaluated by analytics software, transformed into actionable intelligence and delivered to city planners through interfaces such as dashboards, heat maps and reports.
Spectrum Enterprise supports air quality monitoring solutions by providing a nationwide fiber network that spans more than 840,000 miles and delivers symmetrical connection speeds up to 100 Gbps for governments and enterprise customers. This two-way, fully interactive digital network also provides gigabyte connections for homes and businesses, and enables sensors to communicate with the city through a variety of connections, including WiFi and cellular protocols. As a trusted technology partner to many smart cities throughout the nation, Spectrum Enterprise is continually investing in new communities to deconnectivity required by smart solutions like air quality monitoring.
Learn more about Spectrum Smart Cities at www.spectrumsmartcities.com.