PhD project: Test, Validation and Applications of Low-Cost Air Pollution Sensors
University: Aarhus University
Department: Department of Environmental Science
Section: Atmospheric measurements
Supervisor(s): Ole Hertel
Co-supervisor(s): Matthew S. Johnson, Johan A. Schmidt
Project term: 01.11.2020 – 31.10.2023
Master’s degree: MSc in Chemistry, specialization in Physical Chemistry, University of Copenhagen
Background
Air pollution is one of the greatest hazards to human health and the most important environmental risk factor in recent times. Currently, conventional air pollution monitoring is based on static monitoring stations that have high investment, production and maintenance costs, which limits their deployment density. Static monitors yield high-quality data, but their spatial and temporal resolution is limited. Based on such data, it is insufficient to create accurate personal exposure profiles of citizens since their daily time-activity patterns lead to the various microenvironments. Low-cost sensors, as compared to the conventional high-precision instruments, are a promising alternative due to their lower cost, small size and potential to detect various pollutants with high spatiotemporal resolution.
PhD Project Aim
The project aims to test and improve low-cost sensors to produce data with high spatiotemporal resolution. Throughout the project, the tested sensors will be used for large-scale citywide monitoring, exposure studies and epidemiological studies in collaboration with existing Danish cohorts.
