Katushabe Calorine, Kumaran Santhi, Masabo Emmanuel
African Center of Excellence in Internet of Things (ACEIoT), College of Science and Technology (C.S.T.), University of Rwanda, Nyarugenge, Kigali, P.O. Box 3900, Kigali, Rwanda.
Department of Computer Science & Information Technology, Faculty of Computing, Library and Information Science, Kabale University, Street, Kabale, P.O. Box 317, Kabale, Uganda.
Heliyon. 2023 Jul 3;9(7):e17799. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17799. eCollection 2023 Jul.
The impact of air quality on human health and the environment is very significant, with poor air quality being responsible for numerous deaths and environmental damage worldwide. Whereas a number of studies have been done to monitor the quality of air with help of emerging technologies, little has been done to visualize its effect on health particularly on the lungs. The study explores an approach that combines Internet of Things (IoT) technology with High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters air cleaner to monitor and visualize the effects of air pollution on lung health, highlighting the significant damage that poor air quality causes particularly on the lungs graphically. To achieve this, a 3D display of the lungs is modelled using HEPA filters, which changes colour based on the air pollutant concentrations detected by IoT-based sensors. The collected air quality data is then transmitted to Thingspeak, a visualization platform for further analysis. It is observed that the colour of the 3D lung display changed to black over time as air pollutant concentrations increased which in our study is an indicator of unhealthy lung. The study presents an innovative approach to visualize the effects of air pollution on lung health using IoT and HEPA filters air cleaner, which could have significant implications for public health policies aimed at mitigating the harmful effects of air pollution, particularly on lung health.
空气质量对人类健康和环境的影响非常显著,全球范围内,空气质量差导致了大量死亡和环境破坏。尽管已经开展了多项研究,借助新兴技术监测空气质量,但在可视化空气质量对健康尤其是对肺部的影响方面,所做的工作却很少。本研究探索了一种将物联网(IoT)技术与高效空气过滤器(HEPA)空气净化器相结合的方法,以监测和可视化空气污染对肺部健康的影响,直观地突出空气质量差对肺部造成的严重损害。为此,利用高效空气过滤器对肺部进行3D建模显示,其颜色会根据基于物联网的传感器检测到的空气污染物浓度而变化。然后,将收集到的空气质量数据传输到物联网数据可视化平台Thingspeak进行进一步分析。研究发现,随着空气污染物浓度的增加,3D肺部显示的颜色会逐渐变黑,在我们的研究中,这是肺部不健康的一个指标。本研究提出了一种利用物联网和高效空气过滤器空气净化器可视化空气污染对肺部健康影响的创新方法,这可能对旨在减轻空气污染有害影响,尤其是对肺部健康影响的公共卫生政策产生重大影响。