Urban, Local, and Community Mobile Monitoring

“Those who know me know I like a good challenge. So when Ramon Alvarez, Associate Chief Scientist at Environmental Defense Fund, reached out to me about creating an affordable, easy-to-use mobile air quality monitoring system for city vehicles in Houston, I was excited and knew my team would be, too.” – Tim Dye TD Environmental.

In 2018 TD Environmental partnered with T&B Systems on developing a mobile air monitoring system that utilizes existing, off-the-shelf technology, like small, relatively inexpensive air quality instruments, in a new way.

The process was designed to be simple for staff: a driver grabs the Mobile Hyperlocal Air Tracer (MHAT), installs a battery, turns the system on, checks that a few LED lights are illuminated and they’re ready to mount the MHAT on their vehicle. It can be done in just a few minutes. At the end of the day, they pull the system off, recharge the battery overnight and that’s it. Repeat the process the next day. Which they did, for three months, collecting valuable data that gave them a clearer picture of hot spots in the city and how to potentially address them.

As these instruments, including air sensors themselves, become cheaper and smaller, and the technology behind them continues to get better, what began as a mobile air quality monitoring challenge can become a more easily repeatable and scalable initiative for cities and municipalities everywhere.

This was the one of the first times a microAeth® was intergraded  into a mobile monitoring system to measure black carbon.  T&B Systems worked closely with San Francisco based Aethlabs to integrate their MA200 microAeth® into the Campbell Scientific datalogging system.

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