User-Centred Design of a Final Results Report for Participants in Multi-Sensor Personal Air Pollution Exposure Monitoring Campaigns

Using low-cost portable air quality (AQ) monitoring devices is a growing trend in personal exposure studies, enabling a higher spatio-temporal resolution and identifying acute exposure to high concentrations. Comprehension of the results by participants is not guaranteed in exposure studies. However, information on personal exposure is multiplex, which calls for participant involvement in information design to maximise communication output and comprehension. This study describes and proposes a model of a user-centred design (UCD) approach for preparing a final report for participants involved in a multi-sensor personal exposure monitoring study performed in seven cities within the EU Horizon 2020 ICARUS project. Using a combination of human-centred design (HCD), human–information interaction (HII) and design thinking approaches, we iteratively included participants in the framing and design of the final report. User needs were mapped using a survey (n = 82), and feedback on the draft report was obtained from a focus group (n = 5). User requirements were assessed and validated using a post-campaign survey (n = 31). The UCD research was conducted amongst participants in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and the results report was distributed among the participating cities across Europe. The feedback made it clear that the final report was well-received and helped participants better understand the influence of individual behaviours on personal exposure to air pollution.

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User-Centred Design of a Final Results Report for Participants in Multi-Sensor Personal Air Pollution Exposure Monitoring Campaigns

10.20944/preprints202110.0031.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Johanna Amalia Robinson ◽

Rok Novak ◽

Tjaša Kanduč ◽

Thomas Maggos ◽

Demetra Pardali ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Design Thinking ◽

Low Cost ◽

Personal Exposure ◽

Final Report ◽

Draft Report ◽

Horizon 2020 ◽

User Centred Design ◽

Exposure Monitoring ◽

Spatio Temporal

Using low-cost portable air quality (AQ) monitoring devices is a growing trend in personal exposure studies enabling a higher spatio-temporal resolution and identifying acute exposure to high concentrations. Comprehension of results by participants is not guaranteed in exposure studies. However, information on personal exposure is multiplex, which calls for participant involvement to maximise communication output and comprehension. This study describes a user centred design (UCD) approach for preparing a final report for participants involved in a multi-sensor personal exposure monitoring study performed in seven cities within the EU Horizon 2020 ICARUS project. Using a combination of human-centred design (HCD), human-information interaction (HII) and design thinking approaches, we iteratively included participants in the framing and design of the final report. User needs were mapped using a survey (n=82), and feedback on the draft report was obtained from a focus group (n=5). User requirements were assessed and validated using a post-campaign survey (n=31). The UCD research was conducted amongst participants in Ljubljana, Slovenia and the results report was distributed among the participating cities across Europe. The feedback received made it clear that the final report was well-received and helped participants better understand the influence of individual behaviours on personal exposure to air pollution.

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Characterising professional drivers’ exposure to traffic-related air pollution: Evidence for reduction strategies from in-vehicle personal exposure monitoring

Environment International ◽

10.1016/j.envint.2021.106532 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 153 ◽

pp. 106532

Author(s):

Shanon Lim ◽

Benjamin Barratt ◽

Lois Holliday ◽

Chris J. Griffiths ◽

Ian S. Mudway

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Personal Exposure ◽

Professional Drivers ◽

Exposure Monitoring ◽

Reduction Strategies ◽

Personal Exposure Monitoring

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How low-cost air pollution sensors could make homes smarter?

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9113 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Hamid Omidvarborna ◽

Prashant Kumar

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Indoor Air ◽

Air Pollutants ◽

Indoor Air Pollution ◽

Prediction Models ◽

Disease Risk ◽

Low Cost ◽

Mortality And Morbidity ◽

Spatio Temporal ◽

Indoor Air Pollutants

<p>The majority of people spend most of their time indoors, where they are exposed to indoor air pollutants. Indoor air pollution is ranked among the top ten largest global burden of a disease risk factor as well as the top five environmental public health risks, which could result in mortality and morbidity worldwide. The spent time in indoor environments has been recently elevated due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak when the public are advised to stay in their place for longer hours per day to protect lives. This opens an opportunity to low-cost air pollution sensors in the real-time Spatio-temporal mapping of IAQ and monitors their concentration/exposure levels indoors. However, the optimum selection of low-cost sensors (LCSs) for certain indoor application is challenging due to diversity in the air pollution sensing device technologies. Making affordable sensing units composed of individual sensors capable of measuring indoor environmental parameters and pollutant concentration for indoor applications requires a diverse scientific and engineering knowledge, which is not yet established. The study aims to gather all these methodologies and technologies in one place, where it allows transforming typical homes into smart homes by specifically focusing on IAQ. This approach addresses the following questions: 1) which and what sensors are suitable for indoor networked application by considering their specifications and limitation, 2) where to deploy sensors to better capture Spatio-temporal mapping of indoor air pollutants, while the operation is optimum, 3) how to treat the collected data from the sensor network and make them ready for the subsequent analysis and 4) how to feed data to prediction models, and which models are best suited for indoors.</p>

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Evaluation of low-cost sensors for quantitative personal exposure monitoring

Sustainable Cities and Society ◽

10.1016/j.scs.2020.102076 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 57 ◽

pp. 102076 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Sachit Mahajan ◽

Prashant Kumar

Keyword(s):

Low Cost ◽

Personal Exposure ◽

Exposure Monitoring ◽

Personal Exposure Monitoring

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An Assessment of enhanced personal exposure monitoring among children using the Ghana Randomised Air Pollution and Health Study (GRAPHS) Platform

ISEE Conference Abstracts ◽

10.1289/isee.2016.4599 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 2016 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Kwaku Poku Asante* ◽

Darby Jack ◽

Kenneth Ae-Ngibise Ayuurebobi ◽

Ellen Abrafi Boamah ◽

Mohammed Mujtaba ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Personal Exposure ◽

Health Study ◽

Exposure Monitoring ◽

Personal Exposure Monitoring

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Air pollution exposure monitoring using portable low-cost air quality sensors

Smart Health ◽

10.1016/j.smhl.2021.100241 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 100241

Author(s):

Pranvera Korto¸ci ◽

Naser Hossein Motlagh ◽

Martha Arbayani Zaidan ◽

Pak Lun Fung ◽

Samu Varjonen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Air Quality ◽

Low Cost ◽

Exposure Monitoring ◽

Air Pollution Exposure ◽

Pollution Exposure

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Characterising low-cost sensors in highly portable platforms to quantify personal exposure in diverse environments

10.5194/amt-2019-158 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Lia Chatzidiakou ◽

Anika Krause ◽

Olalekan A. M. Popoola ◽

Andrea Di Antonio ◽

Mike Kellaway ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Large Scale ◽

Daily Life ◽

Low Cost ◽

Personal Exposure ◽

High Variability ◽

Health Studies ◽

Underlying Mechanisms ◽

Exposure Metrics ◽

Standard Instrumentation

Abstract. The inaccurate quantification of personal exposure to air pollution introduces error and bias in health estimations, severely limiting causal inference in epidemiological research worldwide. Rapid advancements in affordable, miniaturised air pollution sensor technologies offer the potential to address this limitation by capturing the high variability of personal exposure during daily life in large-scale studies with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. However, concerns remain regarding the suitability of novel sensing technologies for scientific and policy purposes. In this paper we characterise the performance of a portable personal air quality monitor (PAM) that integrates multiple miniaturised sensors for nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3) and particulate matter (PM) measurements along with temperature, relative humidity, acceleration, noise and GPS sensors. Overall, the air pollution sensors showed excellent agreement with standard instrumentation in outdoor, indoor and commuting microenvironments across seasons and different geographical settings. An important outcome of this study is that the error of the PAM is significantly smaller than the error introduced when estimating personal exposure based on sparsely distributed outdoor fixed monitoring stations. Hence, novel sensing technologies as the ones demonstrated here can revolutionise health studies by providing highly resolved reliable exposure metrics at large scale to investigate the underlying mechanisms of the effects of air pollution on health.

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City Wide Participatory Sensing of Air Quality

Frontiers in Environmental Science ◽

10.3389/fenvs.2021.773778 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 ◽

Author(s):

Andrew Rebeiro-Hargrave ◽

Pak Lun Fung ◽

Samu Varjonen ◽

Andres Huertas ◽

Salla Sillanpää ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Air Quality ◽

Low Cost ◽

Age Groups ◽

Personal Exposure ◽

Urban Environments ◽

Sensor Data ◽

Automated System ◽

Participatory Sensing ◽

Good Correspondence

Air pollution is a contributor to approximately one in every nine deaths annually. Air quality monitoring is being carried out extensively in urban environments. Currently, however, city air quality stations are expensive to maintain resulting in sparse coverage and data is not readily available to citizens. This can be resolved by city-wide participatory sensing of air quality fluctuations using low-cost sensors. We introduce new concepts for participatory sensing: a voluntary community-based monitoring data forum for stakeholders to manage air pollution interventions; an automated system (cyber-physical system) for monitoring outdoor air quality and indoor air quality; programmable platform for calibration and generating virtual sensors using data from low-cost sensors and city monitoring stations. To test our concepts, we developed a low-cost sensor to measure particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide (CO), and ozone (O3) with GPS. We validated our approach in Helsinki, Finland, with participants carrying the sensor for 3 months during six data campaigns between 2019 and 2021. We demonstrate good correspondence between the calibrated low-cost sensor data and city’s monitoring station measurements. Data analysis of their personal exposure was made available to the participants and stored as historical data for later use. Combining the location of low cost sensor data with participants public profile, we generate proxy concentrations for black carbon and lung deposition of particles between districts, by age groups and by the weekday.

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Characterising low-cost sensors in highly portable platforms to quantify personal exposure in diverse environments

Atmospheric Measurement Techniques ◽

10.5194/amt-12-4643-2019 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 12 (8) ◽

pp. 4643-4657 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Lia Chatzidiakou ◽

Anika Krause ◽

Olalekan A. M. Popoola ◽

Andrea Di Antonio ◽

Mike Kellaway ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Large Scale ◽

Low Cost ◽

Personal Exposure ◽

High Variability ◽

High Reproducibility ◽

Health Studies ◽

Underlying Mechanisms ◽

Exposure Metrics ◽

Standard Instrumentation

Abstract. The inaccurate quantification of personal exposure to air pollution introduces error and bias in health estimations, severely limiting causal inference in epidemiological research worldwide. Rapid advancements in affordable, miniaturised air pollution sensor technologies offer the potential to address this limitation by capturing the high variability of personal exposure during daily life in large-scale studies with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. However, concerns remain regarding the suitability of novel sensing technologies for scientific and policy purposes. In this paper we characterise the performance of a portable personal air quality monitor (PAM) that integrates multiple miniaturised sensors for nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3) and particulate matter (PM) measurements along with temperature, relative humidity, acceleration, noise and GPS sensors. Overall, the air pollution sensors showed high reproducibility (mean R‾2=0.93, min–max: 0.80–1.00) and excellent agreement with standard instrumentation (mean R‾2=0.82, min–max: 0.54–0.99) in outdoor, indoor and commuting microenvironments across seasons and different geographical settings. An important outcome of this study is that the error of the PAM is significantly smaller than the error introduced when estimating personal exposure based on sparsely distributed outdoor fixed monitoring stations. Hence, novel sensing technologies such as the ones demonstrated here can revolutionise health studies by providing highly resolved reliable exposure metrics at a large scale to investigate the underlying mechanisms of the effects of air pollution on health.

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