†U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Research Triangle Park, Durham, North Carolina 27711, United States.
‡Student Services Contractor, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709, United States.
Environ Sci Technol. 2015 May 19;49(10):6085-92. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.5b01245. Epub 2015 May 5.
Continuous, long-term, and time-resolved measurement of outdoor air pollution has been limited by logistical hurdles and resource constraints. Measuring air pollution in more places is desired to address community concerns regarding local air quality impacts related to proximate sources, to provide data in areas lacking regional air monitoring altogether, or to support environmental awareness and education. This study integrated commercially available technologies to create the Village Green Project (VGP), a durable, solar-powered air monitoring park bench that measures real-time ozone, PM2.5, and meteorological parameters. The data are wirelessly transmitted via cellular modem to a server, where automated quality checks take place before data are provided to the public nearly instantaneously. Over 5500 h of data were successfully collected during the first ten months of pilot testing in Durham, North Carolina, with about 13 days (5.5%) of downtime because of low battery power. Additional data loss (4-14% depending on the measurement) was caused by infrequent wireless communication interruptions and instrument maintenance. The 94.5% operational time via solar power was within 1.5% of engineering calculations using historical solar data for the location. The performance of the VGP was evaluated by comparing the data to nearby air monitoring stations operating federal equivalent methods (FEM), which exhibited good agreement with the nearest benchmark FEMs for hourly ozone (r(2) = 0.79) and PM2.5 (r(2) = 0.76).
户外空气污染的连续、长期和时间分辨测量一直受到后勤障碍和资源限制的限制。希望在更多地方测量空气污染，以解决社区对与邻近污染源有关的当地空气质量影响的担忧，为完全缺乏区域空气监测的地区提供数据，或支持环境意识和教育。本研究整合了商业上可用的技术，创建了 Village Green Project（VGP），这是一种耐用的、太阳能供电的空气监测公园长椅，可实时测量臭氧、PM2.5 和气象参数。数据通过蜂窝调制解调器无线传输到服务器，在向公众提供数据之前，自动进行质量检查，几乎可以即时提供数据。在北卡罗来纳州达勒姆的试点测试的头十个月中，成功收集了超过 5500 小时的数据，由于电池电量低，停机时间约为 13 天（5.5%）。由于无线通信中断和仪器维护不频繁，额外的数据丢失（取决于测量的 4-14%）。通过太阳能实现的 94.5%运行时间与使用该地点历史太阳能数据的工程计算相差 1.5%。通过将数据与附近运行联邦等效方法（FEM）的空气监测站进行比较来评估 VGP 的性能，这与最近的 FEM 基准小时臭氧（r(2) = 0.79）和 PM2.5（r(2) = 0.76）表现出良好的一致性。
