Bus as a sensor: A mobile sensor nodes network for the air quality monitoring

Air pollution is an important issue due to its direct impact on human health. To cope with this problem, in urban areas a 'monitor and react' approach, based on measurements provided use of static monitoring stations, is commonly adopted introducing constrains to the amount of areas that can be monitored within the city. With the rise of the Internet of Things paradigm, new air monitoring models based on mobile sensors networks have been proposed. In this paper, we present the concept of Bus as a Sensor (BaaS): an air quality monitoring system based on mobile sensor nodes placed upon buses. This work aims to provide a high resolution air quality map to report pollutants measurements and facilitate the analysis to support the government decisions in order to reduce the pollution. The proposed paper describes the system architecture and the requirements of sensor nodes to depict the implementation concepts and lay the foundations for future experiments on field. A preliminary end-to-end prototype of the BaaS solution has been already developed at the TIM Joint Open Lab based in Catania and some tests have been successfully carried out within the University campus.