Dynamic air pollution system

Research project P 13924 Dynamic air pollution system Bernhard HOFMANN-WELLENHOF 24.01.2000 Innovative solutions are required to manage the problems related to the steadily increasing traffic. Among them, the air pollution problem plays a dominant role. In a global sense, air pollution is of interest everywhere. Being more specific, the problem of air pollution is mainly attached to areas with dense population and, thus, usually strong traffic. In addition, quite often heavy industry is contributing its part to the air pollution in these areas. The. investigation of the dynamic air pollution information system as proposed in this application may be restricted to urban areas without losing generality, i.e., the system may be generalized to larger areas, countries or even continents without requiring a significant change of the concept. Thus, for economic reasons regarding the costs of this project and for facilitating the testing as well, the dynamic air pollution information system is restricted to urban areas. Following the concept of the proposed system, public transportation means (preferably buses and tramways) will serve as measuring sources. During the service hours of these transportation vehicles, air pollution information data are measured en route together with the position of the bus or tramway. This information is transmitted to a central computing station and processed immediately. The full sample of all measurement data represents the current air pollution situation of the area under consideration. This data set is stored in the dynamic air pollution information system, i.e., a data base. The update rate may be chosen variable to account for, e.g. , the more critical rush-hour periods. The dynamic air pollution information system covers two main objectives. First, extensive dynamic air pollution measurements are available. Second, preventive traffic countermeasures are possible for roads or specific areas if a critical pollution threshold threatens.

Innovative solutions are required to manage problems related to the steadily increasing traffic in dense urban areas. Among them, air pollution plays a dominant role. The idea of the Dynamic Air Pollution System is to monitor the air quality on a continuous basis with mobile devices and combine the data with measurements taken at stationary sites. Public means of transportation (preferably buses or tramways) serve as measurement vehicles. During the service hours of the public transport, air pollution data is transmitted en-route together with the positions of the buses or tramways to a processing center. Today, the air quality in urban areas is modeled using data from standard air quality monitoring devices at stationary monitoring sites. These stationary devices provide highly accurate data for characteristic air quality parameters. The main advantages of stationary monitoring comprise the permanent operation mode and good quality standard. Additionally, stationary monitoring is a well-known and highly developed technique. Disadvantages arise from the location of the measurement stations: the monitoring is based on point measurements and, thus, only reflects the site situation. The mobile air quality data collected by the measurement vehicles supplements the stationary data and has to be considered as one of many input sources for telematics services within traffic management systems. Among others, these services are responsible for the re-direction of traffic and the avoidance of smog by variable traffic limits. Detrimental weather and increased traffic conditions bring about these traffic management activities. The actual air quality situation is also of major interest for city development and road network planning as well as for the modification of public transport timetables and networks. The innovation of the project is the continuous recording of air quality data whereas continuity refers to both position and time. There is no need to apply hypothetic models for the distribution of air pollutants, as it is the case when using a limited number of stationary measurement sites. The Dynamic Air Pollution System consist of a system structure with distinctly separated modules: The Global Positioning System (GPS) to determine position and time; conventional air quality measurement devices; data transfer from the measurement vehicle to the processing center via SMS; and the presentation of the results on an digital map in real time.