Environmental monitoring is becoming more and more important and essential to gather information about the effectiveness of the environment in which collections are kept. The records produced by monitoring the environment in the different locations can provide a useful baseline of the existing conditions where collections are located. They can be used to document constant changes and identify areas with poor control.
The records collected can be then used as supporting documentation to track changes, and to adjust control parameters to better meet the long-term objectives for preservation of the environment. They also guarantee the planning for new or upgraded HVAC equipment and maintenance, or improving collection storage and use practices, along with general elements for public health in any applicable environment.
Managing a set of data providing stability and reducing risk for the different applicable environment and locations is challenging. It relies on careful monitoring to make sure the control over the different environments is working properly, to identify problems requiring attention and actions, to document conditions and their effects, and to support planning for improvements. Monitoring is a key tool in making informed decisions to ensure the safety, stability and constant control.
As a matter of fact, the air we breathe both outdoor and indoor, the water we drink, the pollutants we are exposed to, are all elements directly affecting all of us in terms of quality of life, life expectancy, possibility to incur in some specific diseases, and other aspects of our daily life, also considering our working and living environment. As way of example, poor air quality, for example, has been linked to premature death, cancer, and different respiratory conditions such as pulmonary disease, problems that can occur also when in contact with water exposed to biofilm.
The Global Burden of Disease study estimates that 24% of the world’s burden of disease can be attributed to different environmental factors (IHME, 2013). Environmental monitoring focuses as primary and central element on identifying and measuring different pollutants such as chemical, biological, microbiological in water, soil and air. In addition, environmental monitoring also targets different variable such as humidity, temperature, noise levels, that brought together can also create some correlations useful to prevent and control the environment.
As W2W, we intend to introduce in the market Environ&metrY, an integrated, homogeneous, scalable and modular air and environmental monitoring system, deployed through a scalable cloud-based platform for the IoT, COIOTE (www.coiote.io) developed and owned by our company. It is based on different data transmission systems through the development of our own specific, modular and scalable gateway, that can be easily adapted to the different available protocols such as SigFox, LoRaWAN and GPRS, on the basis of specific users requirements and network availability.
The overall objective of our Feasibility Study has been to validate the business strategy and assess the economic and financial feasibility of the project, based on a sound market analysis. In this way, we have worked to validate also technological and organizational requirements for our product development, also through a cost benefit analysis, and assessing the IPR management and strategy.
As a result, we have identified, selected, quantified and validated the three fields of application of our Environ&metrY solution:
1) Outdoor monitoring system for industry;
2) Indoor monitoring system for industry;
3) Monitoring of biofilm growth in water distribution systems.
