scholarly journals Toward Near Real-Time Kinematics Differential Correction: In View of Geometrically Augmented Sensor Data for Mobile Microclimate Monitoring

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Stefano Tondini ◽  
Farshad Hasanabadi ◽  
Roberto Monsorno ◽  
Antonio Novelli
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Life Quality ◽  
Environmental Parameters ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Urban Context

In the scenario of massive urbanization and global climate change, the acquisition of microclimatic data in urban areas plays a key role in responsive adaptation and mitigation strategies. The enrichment of kinematic sensor data with precise, high-frequency and robust positioning directly relates to the possibility of creating added-value services devoted to improving the life-quality of urban communities. This work presents a low-cost cloud-connected mobile monitoring platform for multiple environmental parameters and their spatial variation in the urban context.

scholarly journals Fixed and Mobile Low-Cost Sensing Approaches for Microclimate Monitoring in Urban Areas: A Preliminary Study in the City of Bolzano (Italy)

Smart Cities ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-70
Author(s):  
Silvia Croce ◽  
Stefano Tondini
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Environmental Parameters ◽  
Urban Morphology ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Spatiotemporal Resolution ◽  
Current Scenario ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The City

In the current scenario of massive urbanization and global climate change, an intelligent monitoring of the environmental variables is becoming fundamental to ensure good living conditions in cities. Indeed, the acquisition of data with high spatiotemporal resolution can enable the assessment of environmental vulnerabilities in urban areas towards the definition of responsive adaptation and mitigation strategies. In this context, the current work presents a two-fold approach based on low-cost cloud-connected sensors for (i) fixed and (ii) mobile monitoring of several environmental parameters. This paper, which focuses on the measurement aspects of the urban micro-climate, describes in detail the hardware and software components of both approaches, and how to exploit them for setting up a field campaign. The methods were tested in the city of Bolzano (Italy), demonstrating their suitability for identifying the spatial variability of the microclimate in relation to the urban morphology, and for highlighting the presence of the urban heat island and estimating its intensity.

scholarly journals Seasonal Influence on the Performance of Low-Cost NO2 Sensor Calibrations

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (23) ◽  
pp. 7919
Author(s):  
Sjoerd van Ratingen ◽  
Jan Vonk ◽  
Christa Blokhuis ◽  
Joost Wesseling ◽  
Erik Tielemans ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Sensor Technology ◽  
Monitoring Networks ◽  
Technical Problems ◽  
Eu Directive ◽  
Short Period ◽  
No2 Sensor ◽  
One Year

Low-cost sensor technology has been available for several years and has the potential to complement official monitoring networks. The current generation of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) sensors suffers from various technical problems. This study explores the added value of calibration models based on (multiple) linear regression including cross terms on the performance of an electrochemical NO2 sensor, the B43F manufactured by Alphasense. Sensor data were collected in duplicate at four reference sites in the Netherlands over a period of one year. It is shown that a calibration, using O3 and temperature in addition to a reference NO2 measurement, improves the prediction in terms of R2 from less than 0.5 to 0.69–0.84. The uncertainty of the calibrated sensors meets the Data Quality Objective for indicative methods specified by the EU directive in some cases and it was verified that the sensor signal itself remains an important predictor in the multilinear regressions. In practice, these sensors are likely to be calibrated over a period (much) shorter than one year. This study shows the dependence of the quality of the calibrated signal on the choice of these short (monthly) calibration and validation periods. This information will be valuable for determining short-period calibration strategies.

Transdisciplinary Design of Adaptation Pathways in Peri-urban India: Planning for Water Needs in a Sustainable Urban Transition 

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharlene L. Gomes ◽  
Sarah Luft ◽  
Shreya Chakraborty ◽  
Leon M. Hermans ◽  
Carsten Butsch
Keyword(s):  
Water Resources ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Water ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Urban Transition ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Key Steps ◽  
Urban Institutions

<p>This research, conducted within the H2O-T2S project, is located in peri-urban areas of three cities in India: Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata. Peri-urban areas are where the rural to urban transition is most visible. A key challenge for peri-urban areas is sustainable management of water resources. Peri-urban water resources in India are under threat from growing water demand and ineffective institutions. Interdisciplinary research of existing water-based livelihoods, household water use, and peri-urban institutions in these three regions shows that current urban transformations are unsustainable. Given the dynamic nature of peri-urban contexts, short and long-term vulnerabilities must be considered. An adaptation policy pathways approach can help peri-urban actors develop longer-term transformative plans. This study describes the design and execution of a participatory process to design context-specific pathways with peri-urban communities and governments in India.</p><p>This presentation outlines the key steps in our customized pathways approach for the peri-urban context. Due to the covid-19 pandemic, initial plans to implement these steps through a series of stakeholder workshops were replaced by remote pathways design using the Delphi method. We present a step-by-step methodology to engage peri-urban actors in the design of longer-term adaptive plans for water resources in the future. Results are presented for Hadia village (Kolkata), one of the three peri-urban case studies. It reveals the range of future normative scenarios developed for this village and a pathways schematic towards these scenarios.</p><p>Our results demonstrate the value of engaging local actors in the design of adaptive plans for peri-urban water resources. This study offers insights for ways to conduct transdisciplinary research even when face to face interactions are not feasible.</p>

Pervasive Healthcare

2010 ◽  
pp. 84-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels Boye
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Ambient Assisted Living ◽  
Life Quality ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Added Value ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Industrial Products ◽  
Sensors And Actuators ◽  
Healthy Human ◽  
Pervasive Healthcare

Pervasive healthcare is a vision for the future of healthcare. Healthcare provisions can be delivered with high quality at low cost along with higher patient-experienced quality and satisfaction as a service on top of a pervasive computing infrastructure, which can be built by integrating communicating computerpower into industrial products and fixed structures in urban and rural spaces. For pervasive healthcare, integration with on body networks sensors and actuators may also be needed. This chapter discusses the prerequisites of this vision from a point of a healthcare professional. A number of parallel advances in concepts have to take place before pervasive healthcare (PH) is matured into a general method for delivering healthcare provisions. The contemporary, most widespread model of healthcare provisions as industrial products with consumer-goods characteristics has to mature into the concepts of welfare economics. New market models have to be developed for PH to pervade society and add value to the health aspects of an individual’s life. Ethical and legal aspects must also be further matured. Maturation of technology is needed. This includes all the components of the “pervasive loop” from sensors to the central intelligence back to the actuators. The “virtual patient/healthy human” as an operational digital representation of the “object/subject of care” also has to be developed. Pervasive healthcare (or the European Union term: ambient assisted living) is a promising field, that has potential to integrate health considerations and health promoting activities for patients and non-patients in their everyday conduct and provide added value to life quality for individuals.

scholarly journals Spatial Analysis of Moments of Stress Derived from Wearable Sensor Data

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Kalliopi Kyriakou ◽  
Bernd Resch
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Hot Spot ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Physiological Signals ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Skin Response ◽  
Density Analysis ◽  
Physiological Sensors

Abstract. Over the last years, we have witnessed an increasing interest in urban health research using physiological sensors. There is a rich repertoire of methods for stress detection using various physiological signals and algorithms. However, most of the studies focus mainly on the analysis of the physiological signals and disregard the spatial analysis of the extracted geo-located emotions. Methodologically, the use of hotspot maps created through point density analysis dominates in previous studies, but this method may lead to inaccurate or misleading detection of high-intensity stress clusters. This paper proposes a methodology for the spatial analysis of moments of stress (MOS). In a first step, MOS are identified through a rule-based algorithm analysing galvanic skin response and skin temperature measured by low-cost wearable physiological sensors. For the spatial analysis, we introduce a MOS ratio for the geo-located detected MOS. This ratio normalises the detected MOS in nearby areas over all the available records for the area. Then, the MOS ratio is fed into a hot spot analysis to identify hot and cold spots. To validate our methodology, we carried out two real-world field studies to evaluate the accuracy of our approach. We show that the proposed approach is able to identify spatial patterns in urban areas that correspond to self-reported stress.

scholarly journals A SENSOR NETWORK BASED ON IOT AND ISTSOS TO ANALYSE THE CATCH BASIN ENVIRONMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF THE <i>AE. ALBOPICTUS</i> EXPANSION IN SWITZERLAND

2021 ◽  
Vol XLVI-4/W2-2021 ◽  
pp. 183-188
Author(s):  
D. Strigaro ◽  
M. Cannata ◽  
D. Ravasi ◽  
E. Flacio ◽  
M. Antonovic
Keyword(s):  
Sensor Network ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Environmental Parameters ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
Transmission Potential ◽  
Diapausing Eggs ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
The Alps

Abstract. The continuous expansion of invasive Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, combined to its ability to transmit arboviruses (e.g. dengue, chikungunya) is raising major public health concern in Europe. In Switzerland, the mosquito is firmly established in most urban areas of the Canton of Ticino, south of the Alps, and there is a real risk that it will colonize also urban areas north of the Alps in the next years. The spatial distribution and colonization of new areas by Ae. albopictus depends on several environmental parameters, such as winter and summer temperatures, and precipitation patterns. A key factor for Ae. albopictus to establish at higher latitudes is the capability to develop cold-tolerant overwintering diapausing eggs under specific environmental conditions. Weather-driven abundance models are used to map the areas of potential distribution and to predict temporal dynamics of Ae. albopictus and the transmission potential of arboviruses. This contribution presents the designed system that integrates low-cost and on-line IoT sensors to monitor temperature, humidity and light with istSOS an OGC Sensor Observation Service server implementation with a user friendly interface and rich feature collection to easily manage this sensor network and distribute data in a standard way (www.istsos.org).

scholarly journals Probabilistic Modelling for Unsupervised Analysis of Human Behaviour in Smart Cities

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Yazan Qarout ◽  
Yordan P. Raykov ◽  
Max A. Little
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Time Of Day ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
Transition Matrices ◽  
Time Dynamics

The growth of urban areas in recent years has motivated a large amount of new sensor applications in smart cities. At the centre of many new applications stands the goal of gaining insights into human activity. Scalable monitoring of urban environments can facilitate better informed city planning, efficient security, regular transport, and commerce. A large part of monitoring capabilities have already been deployed; however, most rely on expensive motion imagery and privacy invading video cameras. It is possible to use a low-cost sensor alternative which enables deep understanding of population behaviour, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) data. However, the automated analysis of such low-dimensional sensor data requires new flexible and structured techniques that can describe the generative distribution and time dynamics of the observation data, while accounting for external contextual influences such as time of day, or the difference between weekend/weekday trends. We propose a novel time series analysis technique that allows for multiple different transition matrices depending on the data’s contextual realisations, all following shared adaptive observational models that govern the global distribution of the data given a latent sequence. The proposed approach, which we name Adaptive Input Hidden Markov model (AI-HMM), is tested on two datasets from different sensor types: GPS trajectories of taxis and derived vehicle counts in populated areas. We demonstrate that our model can group different categories of behavioural trends and identify time specific anomalies.

scholarly journals Probabilistic Modelling for Unsupervised Analysis of Human Behaviour in Smart Cities

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 784
Author(s):  
Yazan Qarout ◽  
Yordan P. Raykov ◽  
Max A. Little
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Time Of Day ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
Transition Matrices ◽  
Time Dynamics

The growth of urban areas in recent years has motivated a large amount of new sensor applications in smart cities. At the centre of many new applications stands the goal of gaining insights into human activity. Scalable monitoring of urban environments can facilitate better informed city planning, efficient security, regular transport and commerce. A large part of monitoring capabilities have already been deployed; however, most rely on expensive motion imagery and privacy invading video cameras. It is possible to use a low-cost sensor alternative, which enables deep understanding of population behaviour such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) data. However, the automated analysis of such low dimensional sensor data, requires new flexible and structured techniques that can describe the generative distribution and time dynamics of the observation data, while accounting for external contextual influences such as time of day or the difference between weekend/weekday trends. In this paper, we propose a novel time series analysis technique that allows for multiple different transition matrices depending on the data’s contextual realisations all following shared adaptive observational models that govern the global distribution of the data given a latent sequence. The proposed approach, which we name Adaptive Input Hidden Markov model (AI-HMM) is tested on two datasets from different sensor types: GPS trajectories of taxis and derived vehicle counts in populated areas. We demonstrate that our model can group different categories of behavioural trends and identify time specific anomalies.

scholarly journals Measure particulate matter by yourself: data-quality monitoring in a citizen science project

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aboubakr Benabbas ◽  
Martin Geißelbrecht ◽  
Gabriel Martin Nikol ◽  
Lukas Mahr ◽  
Daniel Nähr ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Particulate Matter ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Data Quality ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Quality Monitoring ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
And Control ◽  
Future Work ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. The concern about air quality in urban areas and the impact of particulate matter (PM) on public health is turning into a big debate. A good solution to sensitize people to this issue is to involve them in the process of air quality monitoring. This paper presents contributions in the field of PM measurements using low-cost sensors. We show how a low-cost PM sensor can be extended to transfer data not only over Wi-Fi but also over the LoRa protocol. Then, we identify some of the correlations existing in the data through data analysis. Afterwards, we show how semantic technologies can help model and control sensor data quality in an increasing PM sensor network. We finally wrap up with a conclusion and plans for future work.

scholarly journals Institutions in transitioning peri-urban communities: spatial differences in groundwater access

2016 ◽  
Vol 373 ◽  
pp. 125-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharlene L. Gomes ◽  
Leon M. Hermans
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Change ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Groundwater Resources ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Development Framework ◽  
Competing Demands ◽  
Spatial Differences ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Institutional Analysis And Development

Abstract. Urbanization creates challenges for water management in an evolving socio-economic context. This is particularly relevant in transitioning peri-urban areas like Khulna, Bangladesh where competing demands have put pressure on local groundwater resources. Users are unable to sufficiently meet their needs through existing institutions. These institutions provide the rules for service provision and act as guidelines for actors to resolve their water related issues. However, the evolving peri-urban context can produce fragmented institutional arrangements. For example in Khulna, water supply is based on urban and rural boundaries that has created water access issues for peri-urban communities. This has motivated local actors to manage their groundwater needs in various ways. General institutional theories are well developed in literature, yet little is known about institutions in transitioning peri-urban areas. Institutions that fail to adapt to changing dynamics run the risk of becoming obsolete or counter-productive, hence the need for investigating institutional change mechanisms in this context. This paper examines peri-urban case studies from Khulna using the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to demonstrate how institutions have contributed to spatial differences in groundwater access with local actors investing in formal and informal institutional change as a means of accessing groundwater.

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