Smart Campus Air Network (SCAN) for Community Environmental Awareness
Smart Campus Air Network (SCAN) for Community Environmental Awareness
This project is mainly about developing a campus wide smart air sensing network for real-time air quality health index (AQHI) and indoor air quality, while visualizing this technology for raising environmental awareness as well as identifying possible methods of improving indoor air quality.
What is the problem this project is trying to address?
Air pollution is one of the key health risks as identified by World Health Organization (WHO) with various adverse health effects. In urban areas, people spend more than 80% of the daily time inside the buildings and indoor air quality becomes one major contributor of population exposure risks. Meanwhile, for a metropolis like Hong Kong, 54% of total energy end use in Hong Kong is in the form of electricity while about 90% of the electricity is consumed in building. The risks are exposed to us even today at the campus, and this requires a smart solution for clean indoor air quality and healthy building environment.
This project mainly utilizes smart sensing devices to create a Smart Campus Air Network (SCAN). With such sensors as air quality health index (AQHI) sensors and indoor air quality (IAQ) sensors, installation will take place at populated locations in both indoor and outdoors. Sensors will generate a quantifiable data, which will be used for visualization system for the community’s education on environmental consciousness. This will not only encourage every members of community to be environmentally friendly, but also benefit the campus management to be accurately informed on the building healthiness for sustainable operation.
How does this project support our sustainable smart campus as a living lab vision?
The Smart Campus Air Network is crucial for the campus to become more sustainable. Although the Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department operates city air quality measurement station streaming hourly air quality health index, none of them is close to clear water bay. Installing SCAN will allow the faculty to accurately identify the crucial air quality problems in our campus and trigger more environmentally friendly actions. On top of this, installing intelligent sensors will spur more education for community members. This project is expected to involve interdisciplinary knowledge and expertise on environmental management, computer science and environmental engineering. This will later include UROP, FYP and Capstone opportunities, benefiting students to utilizing a smart technology. Ultimately, this project serves as an opportunity not only for the campus to raise environmental awareness and reduce health risk, but also for the community to self-educate with smart technology.
What's next?
After installation AQHI and IAQ sensors, the project team will deploy the Smart Campus Air Network for one-year operation. The team will also create a mobile app to promote environmental awareness in a more accessible way, Then, the team is looking forward to perform data analysis with environmental conditions to improve indoor air quality in campus.
Please check out real-time campus air quality information here.