Air quality in Elkhart County has been of some concern due to the presence of major industries and pollution sources upwind and also many smaller local manufacturing facilities. The EPA measures air quality at fixed sites all over the country but in Elkhart County there are just two.

With the advent of inexpensive microcontrollers and sensors, it is feasible to make portable devices that could be mounted on a car, truck or other vehicle making regular trips throughout the county. Outfitted with sensors for various pollutants, temperature and humidity, in addition to a clock and GPS, such devices could log data about the air quality anywhere they are driven. By including wireless connectivity, they could upload their data to a website whenever they were in range of a suitable wi-fi signal.

 

Existing Data

We will research the existing data and find out as much as possible about what is already known about the air quality in Elkhart County. One aim of this would be to know what level of various pollutants we might be expecting to find with our portable devices.

Device

We will design, build and test a portable device. This will include choosing sensors, choosing a platform (likely some type of Raspberry Pi or Arduino related board), adding GPS, data logging and wi-fi capabilities. Construction will likely need to include a printed circuit board or boards to make the device robust against mechanical and thermal exposure. The devices will need to be programmed (likely in C) to operate autonomously. Various features could be included such as some type of live indicator to the driver of the current air quality.

Web page

We will design and build a web page that can receive the data from the devices over the internet. The aim would be to show a map with the data overlaid a bit like google maps shows traffic data.

Instrument

We will choose, buy and set up a more accurate and specific measuring instrument that is still somewhat portable. When our small devices detect some type of air pollutant, we’d like to be able to go and take more accurate and specific measurements with some well calibrated, sensitive, instrument that can tell us exactly what the pollutants are and at what concentrations. This might be some type or combination of Gas Chromatograph or Mass Spectrometer.

Data collection

When uploaded device data indicates a pollutant in some area, we’ll take many sensors and also our better instrument out to the area and collect much more data over as much public area as we can. This might eventually even include using a quadcopter carrying one of our devices to get data on concentration vs altitude.

Modelling

Using the data collected as well as wind speed and direction, we will try to model the flow and spread of pollutants in order to try to identify the location and emission rate of possible sources.

Connections

We will try to identify others interested in our data and those with expertise to help us understand and interpret the data. As a start we will contact local, state and federal government agencies with responsibilities for air quality and monitoring.

Confronting

If we identify local sources of unhealthy levels of emissions, we may contact them to share what we have found and try to help them find ways to reduce the emissions.