Pervasive Mobile Environmental Sensor Grids

道路交通对当地空气质量的影响是一项重大的公共政策关切，并引发了大量研究，旨在改善基本的车辆和交通管理技术，并为公共政策行动提供信息。最近的工作已经开始利用各种基于车辆、基于个人和基于基础设施的传感器系统的能力，以收集关于驾驶员和交通行为、车辆排放、污染物扩散、浓度和人体暴露的重要方面的实时数据。随着技术的发展，这些传感器数据的种类、普及性和规模将在未来显著增加，使传感器变得更便宜、更小和更低功耗。这将为我们提供大量机会，加深我们对城市空气污染的了解，从而改善城市空气质量。然而，处理由这些传感器产生的大量实时数据将是一项艰巨的任务，需要应用先进的形式计算、通信和定位技术，并开发出组合和解释多种不同形式数据的方法。EPSRC电子科学研究计划中开发的技术提供了许多必要的工具来应对这些挑战。PMESG项目的目的是利用这些工具，并在必要时以适当的方式扩展它们，开发和展示电子科学技术的实际应用，使研究人员和从业者能够连贯地结合来自不同环境传感器的数据，并开发能够改善城市空气质量的模型。PMESG项目由伦敦帝国理工学院领导，由来自剑桥大学、南安普顿大学、纽卡斯尔大学和利兹大学的合作伙伴组成的财团组成，他们将相互密切合作，并与一些主要的工业合作伙伴和地方当局进行密切合作。真正的应用将在伦敦、剑桥、Gateshead和Leicester将在两所大学与每个地点的相关地方当局现有合作安排的基础上再接再厉，并将利用大量现有的数据资源、传感器网络和正在进行的EPSRC和工业资助的研究活动。这些应用将解决迄今为止由于缺乏或相关数据而在这一领域工作的科学家和工程师难以或不可能解决的重要问题。这些问题主要有三类：(I)衡量人类接触污染物的程度；(Ii)确认交通行为、污染物排放和扩散的各种详细模型；以及(Iii)制定不仅考虑交通流量，还考虑空气质量影响的交通网络管理和控制策略。各种案例研究将着眼于这些问题的不同方面，并使用各种不同类型的传感器系统来实现这一点。特别是，每个城市现有的传感器网络将通过选择性地部署一些新的传感器类型(包括路边和车载/人)来增强，以增加传感器输入的多样性。e-Science技术将具有高度一般性，这意味着不仅将应用于交通和空气质量管理，而且还将应用于许多其他产生大量实时位置特定传感器数据的领域。

The impact of road traffic on local air quality is a major public policy concern and has stimulated a substantial body of research aimed at improving underlying vehicle and traffic management technologies and informing public policy action. Recent work has begun to exploit the capability of a variety of vehicle-based, person-based and infrastructure-based sensor systems to collect real time data on important aspects of driver and traffic behaviour, vehicle emissions, pollutant dispersion, concentration and human exposure.The variety, pervasiveness and scale of these sensor data will increase significantly in the future as a result of technological developments that will enable sensors to become cheaper, smaller and lower in power consumption. This will open up enormous opportunities to improve our understanding of urban air pollution and hence improve urban air quality. However, handing the vast quantities of real time data that will be generated by these sensors will be a formidable task and will require the application of advanced forms computing, communication and positioning technologies and the development of ways of combining and interpreting many different forms of data.Technologies developed in EPSRC's e-Science research programme offer many of the tools necessary to meet these challenges. The aim of the PMESG project is to take these tools and by extending them where necessary in appropriate ways develop and demonstrate practical applications of e-Science technologies to enable researchers and practitioners to coherently combine data from disparate environmental sensors and to develop models that could lead to improved urban air quality.The PMESG project is led by Imperial College London, and comprises a consortium of partners drawn from the Universities of Cambridge, Southampton, Newcastle and Leeds who will work closely with one another and with a number of major industrial partners and local authorities.Real applications will be carried out in London, Cambridge, Gateshead and Leicester which will build on the Universities' existing collaborative arrangements with the relevant local authorities in each site and will draw on substantial existing data resources, sensor networks and ongoing EPSRC and industrially funded research activities. These applications will address important problems that to date have been difficult or impossible for scientists and engineers working is this area of approach, due to a lack or relevant data. These problems are of three main types; (i) measuring human exposure to pollutants, (ii) the validation of various detailed models of traffic behaviour and pollutant emission and dispersion and (iii) the development of transport network management and control strategies that take account not just of traffic but also air quality impacts. The various case studies will look at different aspects of these questions and use a variety of different types of sensor systems to do so. In particular, the existing sensor networks in each city will be enhanced by the selective deployment of a number of new sensor types (both roadside and on-vehicle/person) to increase the diversity of sensor inputs.The e-Science technologies will be highly general in nature meaning that will have applications not only in transport and air quality management but also in many other fields that generate large volume of real time location-specific sensor data.