IoT’s impact on cities? — better air quality and greater wellbeing

Rapid growth in urban pop­u­la­tions has accel­er­at­ed the evo­lu­tion of smart cities and the tech­nolo­gies that enable them, includ­ing the inter­net of things (IoT), arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and cloud com­put­ing. Today, more than 55% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion lives in cities and this is expect­ed to rise to 68% by 2050. In Europe, the fig­ure is already greater than 74%.

To com­pete on the glob­al stage, cities have had to digi­tise to meet the ever-increas­ing demands of their inhab­i­tants for resources and ser­vices. A key point of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion amidst this rise of smart cities is guar­an­tee­ing the max­i­mum lev­el of well­be­ing to cit­i­zens. First and fore­most, well­be­ing con­cerns our phys­i­cal health, which starts with the qual­i­ty of air we all breathe.

Reduc­ing air pol­lu­tion is a health emer­gency. Count­less stud­ies have linked poor air qual­i­ty to increased mor­tal­i­ty and lung dis­ease, and reduced par­tic­u­late pol­lu­tion to bet­ter pub­lic health. But although the air qual­i­ty sit­u­a­tion is urgent, grad­ual progress has been made and there is still time for cities to take action. An Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety study in 2009 found the 2.7‑year increase in US life expectan­cy between 1989 and 2000 was strong­ly linked to reduced PM2.5 air pol­lu­tion dur­ing that peri­od.

Accu­rate, trans­par­ent data is now essen­tial to improv­ing air qual­i­ty in cities fur­ther, empow­er­ing cit­i­zens with per­ma­nent access to real-time insights that dri­ve bet­ter deci­sions for their health and well­be­ing. To achieve this, cities need a more com­plete map of air qual­i­ty. The more air qual­i­ty mea­sur­ing points, the more accu­rate infor­ma­tion they can col­lect and ulti­mate­ly share.

Though this may sound sim­ple, the way air qual­i­ty is tra­di­tion­al­ly mea­sured presents bar­ri­ers. Cities typ­i­cal­ly have sev­er­al ultra-high-per­for­mance air qual­i­ty mea­sure­ment sta­tions called ‘ref­er­ence sta­tions’ which are, in effect, small chem­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ries. While the mea­sure­ments are high in qual­i­ty, the sta­tions are very expen­sive to acquire and oper­ate, requir­ing man­u­al col­lec­tion of sam­ples and weigh­ing the micro­grams of par­tic­u­late mat­ter on a pre­ci­sion bal­ance.

“The eco­nom­ic and oper­a­tional chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ed with ref­er­ence sta­tions are so pro­hib­i­tive that many cities can­not viably deploy enough of them to achieve high spa­tial gran­u­lar­i­ty,” says Ali­cia Asín, CEO of Libeli­um, which designs and man­u­fac­tures wire­less sen­sor net­work devices for reli­able IoT and smart city solu­tions. “Thanks to IoT, how­ev­er, cities now have a bet­ter option.”

Libeli­um has designed an air qual­i­ty sta­tion that offers high per­for­mance at a much low­er price. This sta­tion mea­sures the five most impor­tant pol­lu­tant gas­es as well as par­tic­u­late mat­ter, weath­er con­di­tions and noise lev­els. But it does more than just col­lect data. Thanks to AI and machine learn­ing algo­rithms, sim­ply plac­ing a smart air qual­i­ty sta­tion next to a tra­di­tion­al ref­er­ence sta­tion enables it to share the data with oth­er air qual­i­ty sta­tions in dif­fer­ent parts of the city.

“One of our mantras as a com­pa­ny is ‘behind the change, beyond the chal­lenge’,” says Asín. “Libeli­um has been design­ing and devel­op­ing smart tech­nol­o­gy for cities for more than 15 years, even before this tech­nol­o­gy was called the inter­net of things. This has allowed us to be behind the change, dri­ving the cru­cial digi­ti­sa­tion and intel­lec­tu­al­i­sa­tion of many pub­lic and pri­vate com­pa­nies as well as cities. But we always want to go beyond the chal­lenge too.”

In the con­text of air qual­i­ty, Libeli­um sees an oppor­tu­ni­ty to go beyond the chal­lenge by util­is­ing IoT and AI inno­va­tion to sug­gest or even auto­mate reg­u­la­tions, per­mits and bans based on its data. For instance, if the data shows air pol­lu­tion in a part of a city exceeds reg­u­la­tions or healthy lim­its, Libeli­um believes it will be able to send noti­fi­ca­tions to vehi­cle own­ers so that they can avoid enter­ing that area, and redi­rect them to oth­er park­ing areas with free spaces.

“Since Libeli­um devel­ops IoT tech­nol­o­gy in oth­er ver­ti­cals, such as smart water, waste man­age­ment or park­ing, our solu­tions can build a com­plete smart city,” Asín adds. “This is what cities will increas­ing­ly com­pete on. We are in a green rev­o­lu­tion where gov­ern­ments are final­ly lead­ing a new sus­tain­abil­i­ty par­a­digm. We are a pri­or­i­ty part­ner on the road to a new econ­o­my.”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it libelium.com

Pro­mot­ed by Libeli­um