The quality of the air we breathe is a vital asset affecting human health and well-being, as well as environmental resources such as water, soil and forests. The grave consequences of air pollution are measured not only in terms of sickness and death, but also in terms of lost productivity and hampered economic growth due to significant additional operating costs imposed on business, industry, households, and public services. Currently, air pollution is measured regularly at selected locations, mainly at the largest sources of pollution and in city centres. Accurate air quality monitors are costly and bulky; therefore the number of air pollution stations is limited. To assess the spatial distribution of pollutants, dispersion models are used; however, their accuracy is restricted by virtue of variable traffic distribution as well as micro-meteorological effects of urban geometry such as street canyons. Hence it is imperative that dense pollution monitoring networks are deployed, working in tandem with dispersion models to provide real-time mapping of the spatial and temporal variations of urban air quality with high precision, enabling assessment of exposure at a localized/personal level. As the need to reliably monitor gas emissions is becoming more and more urgent in view of environmental challenges, the demand for ‘smart’, networked and truly affordable gas sensors will only grow.
AEOLUS aims to be the first to provide a field-tested holistic air quality solution that is affordable, cloud- connected and ‘smart’ as well as facilitating and encouraging citizen engagement and its widespread deployment into our communities, to meet the needs of Smart City applications and ultimately pave the way to effect necessary changes in our lives. Its objectives are to:
1. Capitalise on well-established Silicon (Si) platform, develop low cost and miniaturized, allowing for high integration sensing elements with enhanced performance
2. Leverage CMOS compatible Germanium on Insulator processes and extend detection range up to ~10 μm
3. Use wafer level processes to considerable minimize the sensor’s cost and footprint
4. Demonstrate a system on chip integrated photonic sensor for multiple gases
5. Use well established embedding PCB technologies to ensure proper thermal management
6. Develop and validate Deep learning models that will provide emerging patterns, accurate chemometric analysis and predictions
7. Leverage IoT testbed and demonstrate supporting IoT services, including air quality visualisation, real time health and safety security alerts, real time commands execution, and gamification
8. Validate and Demonstrate affordable AEOLUS multi- gas smart sensing system to TRL7, and propel its comprising technologies beyond the technological ‘valley of death’
9. Deliver a holistic roadmap and business plan analysis for the path to market of sensing platform and exploitation plan
