OPen WIreless OzoNe SEnsor NEtwoRk for smart environmental monitoring of remote areas: crossing the Alps along the 12th east meridian on the trail Munich Venice

Project Information

PIONEER

Grant agreement ID: 844526

DOI

10.3030/844526

Project terminated on 28 March 2024

EC signature date 25 November 2019

Start date 24 November 2020

End date 30 March 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 251 002,56

EU contribution

€ 251 002,56

Coordinated by

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PIONEER (OPen WIreless OzoNe SEnsor NEtwoRk for smart environmental monitoring of remote areas: crossing the Alps along the 12th east meridian on the trail Munich Venice)

Reporting period: 2022-11-24 to 2023-11-23

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The open-source low-cost sensor networks developed through the project PIONEER (https://github.com/theRosyProject/PIONEER) is capable of long-term measurements of earth near surface ozone, in unpolluted and polluted remote (and urban) environments. It will help to assess the impacts of tropospheric ozone on the earth system, human health and ecosystems, and to detect changes in the atmospheric composition which could aggravate or reduce these impacts because of changing ozone precursor emissions or climate change.

Earth surface ozone is highly relevant for the Earth’s climate, ecosystems, and human health: i) it is the third largest contributor to greenhouse radiative forcing after carbon dioxide and methane; ii) it plays a crucial role in tropospheric chemistry as the main precursor for the OH radical which determines the oxidation capacity of the troposphere; iii) it is a toxic air pollutant affecting human health and agriculture, and, through plant damage, it impedes the uptake of carbon into the biosphere.

The final goal of the project is to develop an IoT tool to be used by scientists and citizen engineers for earth monitoring. While the PIONEER goal is focus on the study of ozone, the IoT infrastructure (hardware/software) developed can be reused for monitoring other air pollutants (e.g. aerosol, NOx, VOCs, etc.) or for different projects (e.g. smart agriculture, smart cities, home automation, etc.).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During his secondment at the University of California, Berkeley, the fellow was involved in research projects and trained in the development of low-cost sensor technologies, wireless sensor networks, project leading and management. He was invited to teach (https://github.com/CenterForTheBuiltEnvironment/R-for-Building-Science) and mentor (https://github.com/CenterForTheBuiltEnvironment/pcs-chair and https://github.com/CenterForTheBuiltEnvironment/clearing-the-air) both undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in Building Science, Technology and Sustainability programs. During the secondment, the fellow published a technical article (https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-6005-2021) showing how to calibrate and use low-cost ozone sensors in a remote alpine environment. The fellow was involved in a study for the assessment of indoor PM2.5 exposure during wildfires in California and he is currently preparing a scientific publication. By the end of the secondment, the fellow developed the PIONEER dedicated PCB and sofware infrastructure that will be tested in the eastern Alps.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

During the project it was demonstrated how low-cost sensors can be used for Earth surface monitoring. The novel and open-source wireless sensor networks application developed during the secondment in Berkeley will enable the exploitation of low-cost technologies for environmental monitoring of remote areas of the planet, also known as "climate sentinels". The IoT design and easy to use hardware developed will potentially allow the involvement of citizens in Earth monitoring. Through citizen science and dedicated education/research projects, the open-source solutions developed could trigger the developement of novel applications (e.g. smart agriculture, smart cities, home automation, etc.).

The figure show the PCB and electronics for data acquisition (right) and sensors (left)