Walk into any Ikea store and chances are you would have taken note of the organization’s intention to ensure that the earth remains nice and green. No longer do you get plastic bags to carry home your purchases with, and there are even solar-powered lamps for you to purchase so that you depend even less on the grid itself. Well, for those who love stores like Ikea, how about moving to a country which is relatively near the Scandinavian region – Switzerland, where air quality sensors are about to be installed in buses and trams?
This novel idea will rely on mobile sensors to collect data in an evenly spread-out area, and is known as the OpenSense project which is by EPFL, a federally funded institute of technology located in Switzerland, and ETH Zurich, a science and technology university in Zurich, Switzerland. The whole point of this idea is to take advantage of existing public transportation vehicles in order to create an extensive network of mobile air quality data collection sites.
Basically, the benefits of the OpenSense project would be tremendous. Imagine an asthmatic person who is thinking of going out, but then decides to check with the OpenSense page that details just how the air quality is like in the area which he/she intends to travel to. Parents too, will be able to know just which area has lower ozone concentrations to bring their kids to during a nice summer day.
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