SBIR Phase II: AQSync for Distributed Calibrations of Mobile Air Quality Sensing Platforms

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是在美国和全球范围内实现空气污染监测和地图绘制的新范式。根据世界卫生组织的数据，全球每年有400万人死亡与环境空气污染直接相关。到目前为止，监测空气污染物的方法仅限于分布在美国每个州的几个固定基站的测量(例如，科罗拉多州600万人口的~30个基站)，这些基站故意远离空气污染热点，以获得近似平均值。低成本传感器技术的最新进展使人们能够通过机会车辆对整个城市和农村地区的空气污染物进行新的高分辨率测绘，例如与拼车服务和送货车辆相关的车辆，这些车辆携带小型空气质量传感器包，不断将空气污染测量数据上传到网络。在这个项目中，这一方法的主要障碍是一种持续验证这些移动空气质量传感器的校准的方法，其精度固有地低于传统仪器。SBIR二期项目建议开发、测试和评估分布式校准站AQSync，该站将安装在城镇的路灯和交通信号灯柱上，为车载空气质量传感器组件提供频繁的分布式校准。一个主要的挑战是开发相对低成本的小型化仪器，为AQSync提供高精度的测量。黑碳尤其如此，据信，在美国，每年有多达20万人因与污染相关的健康状况(如哮喘、中风、心脏病和癌症)而过早死亡。该项目第一阶段的黑碳光度计的开发和商业化是一项潜在的颠覆性技术，有助于在气相中直接测量黑碳，而不需要与以前的仪器相关的已知人工制品，而且占地面积小，适合AQSync。该项目解决了开发算法的下一个挑战，并展示了分布式AQSync校准站的实施使准确的移动传感器测量能够为政策制定者提供信息，从而改善人类健康。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to enable a new paradigm for air pollution monitoring and mapping through the U.S. and globally. According to the World Health Organization, 4 million deaths per year globally are directly linked to ambient air pollution. Until now, the approach to monitoring of air pollutants has been limited to measurements at a few fixed-base stations spread throughout each U.S. state (e.g., ~30 in Colorado for a population of 6 million), and those stations are purposely located far from air pollution hot spots in order to obtain approximate averages. Recent advances in low-cost sensor technology has enabled new high-resolution mapping of air pollutants throughout cities and rural areas through vehicles of opportunity, such as those associated with ride share services and delivery vehicles, carrying small air quality sensor packages continuously uploading air pollution measurements to the web. The principal roadblock to this approach, addressed in this project, is a method to continuously verify the calibration of these mobile air quality sensors, inherently less accurate than traditional instruments. This SBIR Phase II project proposes to develop, test and evaluate a distributed calibration station, AQSync, to be mounted on lamp and traffic light posts throughout cities and towns to provide frequent distributed calibrations of vehicle-borne air quality sensor packages. A major challenge has been the development of relatively low-cost miniaturized instruments offering highly accurate measurements for inclusion in AQSync. This is particularly true for black carbon, believed to contribute substantially to up to 200,000 premature deaths each year in the U.S. through pollution-related health conditions such as asthma, stroke, heart disease and cancer. The development and commercialization of a Black Carbon Photometer in Phase I of this project represents a potentially disruptive technology facilitating measurements of black carbon directly in the gas phase, without the known artifacts associated with previous instruments and within a small footprint suitable for AQSync. This project addresses the next challenge of developing algorithms and demonstrating that implementation of distributed AQSync calibration stations enable accurate mobile sensor measurements to inform policy-makers, subsequently improving human health.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.