Robert Schima1,
Tobias Goblirsch2, Christoph Salbach3, Bogdan Francyk2,
Jan Bumberger1 and Peter Dietrich1
1 UFZ – Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Department
Monitoring and Exploration Technologies, robert.schima@ufz.de
2 University of Leipzig, Faculty of Economics and Management, Information
Systems Institute, tobias.goblirsch@uni-leipzig.de
3UFZ - Helmholtz Centre for Environmental
Research, Department of Computational Landscape Ecology, Leipzig, Germany, christoph.salbach@ufz.de
Motivation
The impact of global change,
urbanization and complex interactions between humans and the environment show
different effects on different scales. However, the desire to obtain a better
understanding of ecosystems and process dynamics in nature accentuates the need
for observing these processes in higher temporal and spatial resolutions.
Especially with regard to the process dynamics and heterogeneity of urban
areas, a comprehensive monitoring of these effects remains to be a challenging
issue in the field of environmental research.
Mobile Sensor Integration Platform
Open source based electronics and
cost-effective sensors are offering a promising approach to explore new
possibilities of mobile data acquisition and innovative strategies and thereby
support a comprehensive ad-hoc monitoring and the capturing of environmental
processes close to real time. Accordingly,
our project aims the development of new strategies for mobile data acquisition
and real-time processing of user-specific environmental data, based on a
holistic and integrated process. To this end, the concept of our monitoring
system covers the data collection, data processing and data integration as well
as the data provision within one infrastructure. This ensures a consistent data
stream and a rapid data processing. However, the overarching goal is the
provision of an integrated service instead of lengthy and arduous data
acquisition by hand. Therefore, the system also serves as a data acquisition
assistant and gives guidance during the measurements.
Figure 1: Basic idea of an holistic monitoring of urban
areas leading into an interactive service oriented data store of gathered
information.
Hands-on Approach
In
technical terms, our monitoring system consists of mobile sensor devices, which
can be controlled and managed by a smart phone app (Android). At the moment,
the system is able to acquire temperature and humidity in space (GPS) and time
(real-time clock) as a built in function. In addition, larger system
functionality can be accomplished by adding further sensors for the detection
of e.g. fine dust, methane or dissolved organic compounds. From the IT point of
view, the system includes a smart phone app for initial data processing, data
provision and data visualization. Furthermore, the smart phone app provides an
interface to the powerful engine of myObservatory. Here, the user has full
access to all the data managing and analysis tools provided by myObservatory.
Environmental monitoring and data evaluation have never been more exiting. Feel
free to contact us for more information or additional notes.
Figure 2: The whole system is constructed in a modular
way. Little adjustments can be done easily and even under field conditions.
Initial Field Experiments
In September 2015, an initial city
monitoring based on the mobile monitoring platform was performed by five
independently driving cyclists through the city center of Leipzig (Germany).
Figure 3: The figure shows the prototype of the sensor
integration platform fixed to a bike rack, ready for an ad-hoc urban
monitoring.
As a result we were able to instantly
show a heat and humidity map of the inner city center as well as an exposure
map for each cyclist. This emphasizes the feasibility and high potential of
open source based monitoring approaches for future investigation in the field
of urban area monitoring, environmental research, citizen science or the
validation of remote sensing data. Below you can see an example of the data
gathered by the mobile sensor integration platform presented and analyzed by
using the tools of myObservatory. Thanks to myObservatory, environmental data
acquisition and evaluation - easy as pie.
Figure 4: Urban Monitoring by bike. Sampling points of
temperature and humidity measurement based on the mobile sensor integration
platform.
Figure 5: Urban Monitoring by bike. Evaluation of urban
heat conditions based on the mobile sensor integration platform.
To sum-up:
Figure 6: Overview of the mobile open source based
sensor platform.
Visit our site at my-observatory.com to get a better idea on our platform and options.
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