This paper presents the first results of the application of an array of fifty novel wireless pervasive sensors, referred to as motes, developed at Newcastle University in the project, MESSAGE (Mobile Environmental Sensing System Across Grid Environments). This project, jointly founded by the EPSRC and the Department for Transport is a collaboration of Imperial, Cambridge, Southampton and Leeds Universities. The motes measure noise, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, temperature, humidity and occupancy/flow. The system has GPS, accelerometer and wireless communication (using ZIGBEE standard) to allow daisy chaining of data from mote to mote (either static or dynamic) to router technology which then forwards the data into a gateway. This passes the data through mobile phone/PDA (or hard wired web link) to be captured in real-time into a UTMC compliant database. The pollution data is calibrated to accommodate temperature and humidity effects based on prior co-location with precision sensors. Following a brief discussion of the health impacts associated with noise exposure and the policy context, the validation and proof of concept of the use of a pervasive sensor array to measure noise in an urban area is demonstrated through separate deployments in Leicester (UK) and Palermo (Italy). The motes provide real-time minute by minute, noise data [Leq in dB(A)] and their low cost and small size means that they can be pervasively deployed. From the two applications the results clearly show the potential of these motes to measure noise levels and to improve the understanding of the effect of traffic flow characteristics on the minute by minute variation in noise levels.
展开▼
