AAAR 36th Annual Conference October 16 - October 20, 2017 Raleigh Convention Center Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Abstract View
UAIR – Building a Distributed AQ Sensor Network for the Union College Community
ANDREW HUISMAN, Sarah Connolly, Alexandra Novak, Paige Kotowitz, Eben Cross, Union College
Abstract Number: 568 Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract We describe the Union College Air Quality Network (UAIR), a distributed network of five low-cost, integrated air quality measurement systems each comprised of electrochemical sensors for trace gas measurements of CO, NO, NO2, and O3 along with light-scattering-based quantification of PM. The sensors, developed by Aerodyne Research, Inc. (i.e. ARISense), were placed at indoor and outdoor locations at Union College, a small (2100 students; ~0.25 km2 campus) undergraduate residential college in Schenectady, NY. The UAIR network was used to observe trends in air quality on campus at three outdoor locations across campus as well as inside the campus copy center and the atrium of the student center / cafeteria. The network ran continuously in this configuration from November 2016 to May 2017. Observations over this time include characterizing the impact of local biomass burning activities (prescribed burn at a nearby forest reserve; wood combustion for home heating), understanding how student activities can influence indoor air quality, and capturing seasonal variability in pollutant concentration trends. In addition to the deployed network results, data from a series of sensor co-location tests will be presented, underscoring the importance of assessing node-to-node variability when interpreting low-cost sensor data.