An environmental sensor system for pervasively monitoring road networks

This paper describes the on-going research at Newcastle University in the MESSAGE project which is a major environmental monitoring project funded jointly by the EPSRC and DfT. The MESSAGE project investigates the use of low cost wireless sensors and their deployment to create a dense, pervasive, ad-hoc network for monitoring traffic pollution in a road environment. Each of the wireless devices carries one or more sensor payloads which will capture one or more of the pollutants directly associated with road vehicle emissions. This paper will provide an overview of the deployment of a MOTES network in Gateshead, UK, to measure a variety of pollutants and also explore whether other pervasive sensors, such as vehicle detectors can be included in the overall monitoring package. The research will cover three distinct areas: the network development; the applications developed for monitoring pollutants; and an investigation as to how the data collected could be used to validate and calibrate emissions and dispersions models. A final step will be to explore how this vast array or real-time data could be used to modify and influence real traffic control schemes, to give environmental measurements a clear, policy-sensitive role in future traffic management and control schemes.