10th International Aerosol Conference September 2 - September 7, 2018 America's Center Convention Complex St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Abstract View
Continuous Field Calibration of Low-Cost PM2.5 Sensor Networks
Kyle Alberti, GEOFF HENSHAW, Georgia Miskell, Hamesh Patel, Jonathan Taylor, David Williams, Aeroqual Ltd
Abstract Number: 889 Working Group: Low-Cost and Portable Sensors
Abstract The availability of low-cost PM2.5 sensors has enabled large numbers of such devices to be deployed in a variety of ad-hoc networks which have the potential to provide new insights into the distribution of this pollutant at community and street level. However new methods to calibrate and validate such data are needed that are commensurate with the low-cost nature of such networks.
We report on the field application of a simple, continuous calibration technique to a hierarchical PM2.5 network located in California featuring a small number of PM2.5 regulatory instruments (“proxies”) and a much larger number of low-cost devices. The technique calculates slope and offset for the low-cost devices from the mean and variance of the time-averaged distribution proxy data over a similar time interval.
We explore the effect of different types of proxies on the calibration accuracy and the benefits and limitations of the approach.