Use of low -cost sensors to develop tools in the management of air quality of the city of Cuenca

Air pollution is an important environmental health problem that affects the entire planet. On a global scale, large amounts of potentially harmful gases and particles are emitted to the atmosphere, which have direct affectation to the environment and therefore to the quality of life of the human being, however, social variables have been neglected, considering that pollution has generated different effects difficult to measure in the quality of life. On the other hand, the Mobility and Transportation Company EMOV EP has a "air quality monitoring network" that began its activities in December 2007, which is made up of 19 surveillance points strategically distributed in different sites of the city, which since 2012 is working the air quality automatic station located on the terrace of the building of the Mayor's Office of Cuenca registering in real time the concentration of the contaminants NO2, SO2, PM2.5 and O3). In that sense it is important to indicate that the EMOV EP teams do not have time measurements in various parts of the Historic Center of Cuenca. Hence the objective of the study is to use low -cost sensors to develop tools in the management of air quality of the city of Cuenca. Faced with these types of problems, technological advances have allowed the European Commission to replace traditional methodologies with low -cost sensors, since these techniques have advantages regarding costs, less time invested in data collection, greater ease in interpretation in more places at the same time. On the other hand, 8 low -cost stations will be built in the development of the project, which are based on the construction and development of compact and cheap air quality stations that use laser sensors and electrochemicals connected to Dataloggers with the ability to transmit real -time data on a web platform, where the value of: sulfur dioxide (SO4), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), will be displayed Carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), noise, particulate material less than 10 microns (MP10), particulate material less than 2.5 microns (mp2.5), temperature and relative humidity. Once the teams are built, a air monitoring microred will be assembled, which will store data that will serve to see influence on socio -economic activities in an area previously defined by the team of researchers, since the ideal is to apply the investigation in apples with homogeneous economic activities. In the case of socioeconomic information, it will be executed in an area of 11 homogeneous apples containing: parking, shopping center, commercial areas, church and inhabited housing, where the flow of people who travel the chosen conglomerates, the economic intensity by means of the number of transactions carried out and the family habitability conditions will be measured. Finally, as results, we will be delivered: 1) Web platform where the data of the established variables will be displayed and that can also calculate a real -time air quality index with an update every 5 minutes, 2) 8 low -cost equipment capable of measuring pollutants and weather in urban areas in urban areas and 3) Databases on which it allows decisions to be made with respect to the behavior of pollution variables The relationship in the historical center in the historic center.

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