Integrated solution initially targets fine particles and indoor air quality monitoring. Appcessories are designed to be compatible with both iPhone and Android platforms.

There is growing interest for air quality monitoring as the recent controversy in London or the need for Chinese cities to publish fine particles levels recently revealed. Citizens and communities are increasingly aware of the correlation between personal exposure to environmental pollution and health.
After pilot projects and deployments in 15 cities on 4 continents, Sensaris is now launching the first global network for air quality monitoring based on cloud technologies and smartphones.
Environmental data such as noise, CO2, CO, fine particles, humidity, temperature, along with positioning information is sent wirelessly to iPhones (starting this summer) or Android mobile devices. Users can choose to store data on the phone, send it to a server for real time mapping or store it locally on the Senspod’s memory card for later or periodic automated transfer. The patent pending solution will now enable citizens to monitor indoor and outdoor air quality and compare or share results via social networking applications. For smart city services, pocket sized Senspods have been used by pedestrians, mounted on vehicles (bicycles, cars) or placed on urban furniture. The scalable architecture combined with the ease of use the mobile application and web based interface ensure easy deployment.
Michael Setton, CEO indicated: “In many cases there are more sensors in a car than air quality monitoring stations in a city. After getting a boost from the Bluetooth Innovation world Cup in January, we are very excited to deploy Senspods in several new cities this summer. Our devices and software will provide citizens and communities with new means of improving air quality, and the use of social networking tools will foster exchange of ideas and solutions on a global scale. This is an important step in increasing people’s engagement to bring local solutions to this growing issue. In subway stations our sensors can be combined with LED lights to provide energy savings and environmental information to citizens. For more than 9000 metro stations worldwide, public transportation users could soon get real time indoor air quality values on their mobile phones.”

The Health Work Collective published an article about ZAO, the all-in-one mHealth device released by Sensaris.

This interesting article explains how ZAO has been designed and tested in though conditions in Nepal and what could be its first applicartion with EHealth Points Services India, which provides families in rural villages with clean drinking water, medicines, diagnostic tools and telemedicine.

Health Work Collective is an editorially independent, moderated community for thought leaders in international healthcare. They aggregate content and provide resources about all aspects of modern medicine, providing a community where healthcare professionals can debate the latest issues and advances in their field.

Read more here.

To facilitate measurement both outdoors and indoors indoors (where we spend the majority of our time), Sensaris is releasing its Senspod EcoPM so users can now check ultrafine particle levels directly on their mobile phones.

Growing worldwide concern about PM

A growing number of city government are asked to act on improving environmental quality. For example, at the beginning of March 2012, the Hong Kong government began releasing hourly readings of ultrafine particles, as it bowed to public pressure for greater transparency about air quality.

In 2013, the monitoring of PM2.5 and Ozone will be extended to 113 cities in China.

If you’re interested in having international comparison for PM 2.5 and PM 10 in cities, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has conducted a very interesting study with a lot of data available.

Impact on health

Particles in ambient air have been associated with adverse health effects, including respiratory and cardiovascular effects. (See “Tackling the global clean air challenge report” by WHO)
Find additional information about air quality impact on health

Such Ultrafine particles can be “imported” from the outdoors but they can also be generated by combustion (cooking, heating, smoking…..) or by reactions between ozone and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).
You can find more information about ultrafine particles here

A mobile sensor with a phone application

The ability to use low cost mobile phones to record the fine particle levels provides a new tool to understand adverse possible causes of high particle counts as well as monitor trends, evaluate the effectiveness of control strategies and the degree of improvement brought by new solutions.

The GPS module also enables the unit to be carried by pedestrians or mounted on vehicles in order to map out cities and help city governments to provide citizens with the means to compare areas and evaluate progress.

Go to our Products page to learn more about EcoPM.

EcoPM Sheet