Sensors (May 2024)

Multi-Sensor Device for Traceable Monitoring of Indoor Environmental Quality

  • Virginia Isabella Fissore,
  • Giuseppina Arcamone,
  • Arianna Astolfi,
  • Alberto Barbaro,
  • Alessio Carullo,
  • Pietro Chiavassa,
  • Marina Clerico,
  • Stefano Fantucci,
  • Franco Fiori,
  • Davide Gallione,
  • Edoardo Giusto,
  • Alice Lorenzati,
  • Nicole Mastromatteo,
  • Bartolomeo Montrucchio,
  • Anna Pellegrino,
  • Gabriele Piccablotto,
  • Giuseppina Emma Puglisi,
  • Gustavo Ramirez-Espinosa,
  • Erica Raviola,
  • Antonio Servetti,
  • Louena Shtrepi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/s24092893
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 24, no. 9
p. 2893

Abstract

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The Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) combines thermal, visual, acoustic, and air-quality conditions in indoor environments and affects occupants’ health, well-being, and comfort. Performing continuous monitoring to assess IEQ is increasingly proving to be important, also due to the large amount of time that people spend in closed spaces. In the present study, the design, development, and metrological characterization of a low-cost multi-sensor device is presented. The device is part of a wider system, hereafter referred to as PROMET&O (PROactive Monitoring for indoor EnvironmenTal quality & cOmfort), that also includes a questionnaire for the collection of occupants’ feedback on comfort perception and a dashboard to show end users all monitored data. The PROMET&O multi-sensor monitors the quality conditions of indoor environments thanks to a set of low-cost sensors that measure air temperature, relative humidity, illuminance, sound pressure level, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, and formaldehyde. The device architecture is described, and the design criteria related to measurement requirements are highlighted. Particular attention is paid to the calibration of the device to ensure the metrological traceability of the measurements. Calibration procedures, based on the comparison to reference standards and following commonly employed or ad hoc developed technical procedures, were defined and applied to the bare sensors of air temperature and relative humidity, carbon dioxide, illuminance, sound pressure level, particulate matter, and formaldehyde. The next calibration phase in the laboratory will be aimed at analyzing the mutual influences of the assembled multi-sensor hardware components and refining the calibration functions.

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