scholarly journals A Sensor-Based Drone for Pollutants Detection in Eco-Friendly Cities: Hardware Design and Data Analysis Application

Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Roberto De De Fazio ◽  
Leonardo Matteo Dinoi ◽  
Massimo De Vittorio ◽  
Paolo Visconti

The increase in produced waste is a symptom of inefficient resources usage, which should be better exploited as a resource for energy and materials. The air pollution generated by waste causes impacts felt by a large part of the population living in and around the main urban areas. This paper presents a mobile sensor node for monitoring air and noise pollution; indeed, the developed system is installed on an RC drone, quickly monitoring large areas. It relies on a Raspberry Pi Zero W board and a wide set of sensors (i.e., NO2, CO, NH3, CO2, VOCs, PM2.5, and PM10) to sample the environmental parameter at regular time intervals. A proper classification algorithm was developed to quantify the traffic level from the noise level (NL) acquired by the onboard microphone. Additionally, the drone is equipped with a camera and implements a visual recognition algorithm (Fast R-CNN) to detect waste fires and mark them by a GPS receiver. Furthermore, the firmware for managing the sensing unit operation was developed, as well as the power supply section. In particular, the node’s consumption was analysed in two use cases, and the battery capacity needed to power the designed device was sized. The onfield tests demonstrated the proper operation of the developed monitoring system. Finally, a cloud application was developed to remotely monitor the information acquired by the sensor-based drone and upload them on a remote database.

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Martina Habulan ◽  
Bojan Đurin ◽  
Anita Ptiček Siročić ◽  
Nikola Sakač

Particulate matter (PM) comprises a mixture of chemical compounds and water particles found in the air. The size of suspended particles is directly related to the negative impact on human health and the environment. In this paper, we present an analysis of the PM pollution in urban areas of Croatia. Data on PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations were measured with nine instruments at seven stationary measuring units located in three continental cities, namely Zagreb (the capital), Slavonski Brod, and Osijek, and two cities on the Adriatic coast, namely Rijeka and Dubrovnik. We analyzed an hourly course of PM2.5 and PM10 concentrations and average seasonal PM2.5 and PM10 concentrations from 2017 to 2019. At most measuring stations, maximum concentrations were recorded during autumn and winter, which can be explained by the intensive use of fossil fuels and traffic. Increases in PM concentrations during the summer months at measuring stations in Rijeka and Dubrovnik may be associated with the intensive arrival of tourists by air during the tourist season, and lower PM concentrations during the winter periods may be caused by a milder climate consequently resulting in lower consumption of fossil fuels and use of electric energy for heating.


Author(s):  
Li Jun ◽  
Li Li ◽  
Zhang Yongxiang ◽  
Chu Zhigang ◽  
Fan Xiaopeng

In China, noise pollution from substations in urban areas is becoming more and more serious. An annoyance evaluation of the noise emitted by urban substations is presented. First, the subjective evaluation is conducted on the noise samples from urban substations via the semantic differential method. Subsequently, according to the typical characteristics of urban substation noise, 14 acoustical metrics are used to describe the noise samples for objective evaluation. Then the correlation analysis and regression analysis between the objective and subjective evaluation results are carried out. Finally, a regression model for urban substation noise evaluation is established. Practical application shows that the regression model can correctly predict the subjective annoyance of urban substation noise.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaolong Zhang ◽  
Yigang He ◽  
Lifeng Yuan ◽  
Sheng Xiang ◽  
Jinping Wang

Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in many electronic systems. Therefore, it is significantly important to estimate the lithium-ion battery’s remaining useful life (RUL), yet very difficult. One important reason is that the measured battery capacity data are often subject to the different levels of noise pollution. In this paper, a novel battery capacity prognostics approach is presented to estimate the RUL of lithium-ion batteries. Wavelet denoising is performed with different thresholds in order to weaken the strong noise and remove the weak noise. Relevance vector machine (RVM) improved by differential evolution (DE) algorithm is utilized to estimate the battery RUL based on the denoised data. An experiment including battery 5 capacity prognostics case and battery 18 capacity prognostics case is conducted and validated that the proposed approach can predict the trend of battery capacity trajectory closely and estimate the battery RUL accurately.


Author(s):  
Neelima S. Naik

Noise pollution in urban areas is recognized as a major environmental concern in India. The lack of infrastructure and fast paced life in major metropolitan cities of India has made the urban environment extremely crowded, busy as well as noisy and as a result the millions of people living in the major metropolitan areas are suffering from the impacts of noise pollution. Noise levels are escalating at such a rate that it has become a major threat to the quality of human lives. Direct links between noise and health have been established by research conducted over the past few decades. There are several causes for urban degradation such as population migration, environmental considerations not adequately being incorporated into master plans, uncoordinated and haphazard development, weak implementation of plans and laws and inadequate institutional competences and resource crunch. This paper discusses the causal factors, impacts and the different approaches adopted by the Central Government as well as some major State Pollution Control Boards to curb the urban noise problem and the need for looking into non-conventional solutions such as Ecocity programme to bring in visible environmental improvement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 16-21
Author(s):  
Saeed Abbassi

Noise pollution caused by vehicle traffic is one of the major problems in urban areas with road expansion. Due to the increase in the cost of construction and installation of sound walls to deal with noise pollution, to deal with this problem should look for methods that do not have additional costs and operating costs. Improving the pavement texture is one of the most effective ways to reduce tire noise and pavement and reduce the asphalt surface’s sound. To evaluate the slip resistance of asphalt, the English pendulum test according to ASTM E303-74 standard was performed on wet parts of asphalt in wet conditions. This device is used to examine the fine texture of the pavement. The number of pavement friction with a negative coefficient of 0.1469 has an inverse ratio with the intensity of sound level increases the number of pavement friction aligned with the amount of sound level created decreases. On the other hand, the depth of pavement texture, which is determined as the size of pavement materials, with a coefficient of 0.2810, has a direct ratio with the amount of noise pollution, and the smaller the number of fine-grained materials used will increase the sound level. According to the results of the coefficients estimated from the equation, it can be concluded that the preparation of pavements with an amount of friction can reduce the amount of noise pollution emitted by the movement of vehicles, especially in urban areas and sensitive areas. Therefore, it is recommended that in acoustically sensitive areas, in preparing pavements, arrangements be made to use coarser materials and maintain proper pavement resistance. For this purpose, in this article, the pavement’s texture is examined in the amount of noise created due to the tire’s interaction and the pavement.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 4241-4272
Author(s):  
Türkan Müge ÖZBEKLER ◽  
Arzu KARAMAN AKGÜL

Recently, urban areas face challenges that result from negative externalities of traditional distribution networks. Especially, city actors increasingly suffer from issues as inefficient load factors in operations, traffic volume on roads, and noise pollution. To overcome these problems, modern city distribution patterns integrated with the consolidation strategy have the potential to provide satisfying solutions. Align with city actors’ expectations, alternatives of consolidation-distribution schemes can offer improvements in both economic, social, and environmental issues. In particular, this study aims at an ex-ante evaluation of city distribution alternatives on the typology of consolidation-distribution schemes ensuring win-win solutions to each city actor. This paper adopts Multi Actor Multi-Criteria Analysis (MAMCA) as a novel approach to evaluating different city actors’ objectives and a set of city distribution alternatives comprehensively. The paper results highlight that micro consolidation centre facilities can be more suitable in response to city actors’ expectations among distribution alternatives to urban consolidation centre and mobile depot. Finally, future research in this topic can focus on evaluating distribution alternatives on a sector basis and marketing types such as B2B and B2C.  


Author(s):  
A.W.A. Hammad ◽  
A. Akbarnezhad ◽  
D. Rey

The incorporation of sustainable design measures in urban planning and development has been steadily increasing in the recent years. Achieving a sustainable urban environment requires accounting for the economic, environmental and social impacts of the development involved. An important factor affecting the social and environmental sustainability of urbanised areas which is commonly overlooked in urban planning is the noise pollution level. Despite the proven impacts of noise pollution on the general wellbeing of individuals within an urban setting, there remains a lack of systematic methods to integrate the impact of noise within the design of urban areas. This chapter seeks to raise awareness of the issue of noise pollution in urban settings while proposing novel approaches for its incorporation as a design parameter in planning the layout of smart cities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 171 ◽  
pp. 02008
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Pyszny ◽  
Mariusz Sojka ◽  
Rafał Wróżyński

Planning green infrastructure in the cities is a challenging task for planners and city managers. Developing multifunctional green space systems provide many benefits including: increasing water retention, mitigating urban heat island effect, microclimate regulation, reducing air, water and noise pollution and conservation biodiversity. The greenery in the city also have an impact on human health. The paper presents the possibilities of using LiDAR data mapping vegetation density in urban areas on the example of Gorzów Wielkopolski (Poland). Maps made as a result of processing the point clouds obtained from airborne laser scanning represents the most accurate, comprehensive and detailed assessment of Gorzów Wielkopolski vegetation cover to date and establishes the baseline for greenery governance and planning of green infrastructure in the city.


Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 370 (6516) ◽  
pp. 575-579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth P. Derryberry ◽  
Jennifer N. Phillips ◽  
Graham E. Derryberry ◽  
Michael J. Blum ◽  
David Luther

Actions taken to control the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have conspicuously reduced motor vehicle traffic, potentially alleviating auditory pressures on animals that rely on sound for survival and reproduction. Here, by comparing soundscapes and songs across the San Francisco Bay Area before and during the recent statewide shutdown, we evaluated whether a common songbird responsively exploited newly emptied acoustic space. We show that noise levels in urban areas were substantially lower during the shutdown, characteristic of traffic in the mid-1950s. We also show that birds responded by producing higher performance songs at lower amplitudes, effectively maximizing communication distance and salience. These findings illustrate that behavioral traits can change rapidly in response to newly favorable conditions, indicating an inherent resilience to long-standing anthropogenic pressures such as noise pollution.


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