A Low-cost Mobile Urban Environmental Monitoring System

The increasing pace of economic development and urbanization around the world has led to serious problems of environmental pollution, particularly from automobile emissions which contributes to Global Warming. In this paper, a low-cost mobile urban environmental monitoring system is proposed using off-the-shelf open source hardware and software. The system can be installed or used in public transport vehicles, particularly in school and college buses in countries like India. A pollution map of local and regional environments can be built from the data acquired, and displayed online leading to increased awareness of urban pollution problems. The system can also be used in situ in school and college buses to educate children and youth on emerging technologies like computer hardware, software, and web technologies. Results of prototype implementation are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the approach.