New Strategy for a good Management and Control of Pollution Caused by urban Traffic

Abstract

Pollution control is based on correctly measuring pollutant concentrations but, at the moment,<br />the principal European cities only monitor pollution levels by means of a few fixed stations co-located in<br />selected points of the urban layout far from hotspots and/or by means of meteorological prediction models of<br />future pollution. Few cities integrate the information from both sources. The implementation of wireless<br />sensor network provides an alternative solution by deploying a larger number of disposable sensor nodes and<br />it is the key that enable more flexible real-time environmental monitoring. This paper presents a new system<br />for sustainable traffic management by using models that predict pollution levels, which are fed with data,<br />gathered by the air quality sensors network and may help to take early action. This new system has been<br />implemented in Salamanca (Spain), thus allowing, to test in real urban environments the collection and processing<br />of data from 35 motes located in experimental roads during a year-round period. Monitoring results allow<br />building a database with the temporal evolution of the different environmental indicators registered. In general<br />the prediction model has an average error around 20% for predictions at one hour and 30% at three hours. The<br />results highlight the very good performance of the prediction model. The strategic approach proposed is<br />highly innovative and embodies great scientific and technological advances. The use and integration of measured<br />and modeled data thus becomes a key element in the future management of atmospheric pollution.