Stoorm5

The PRESS project will support citizens to become more aware of the natural environment they live in, providing real-time information about air pollution and more general environmental conditions related to their surroundings. The main outcome of the project will be the design and prototyping of PRESS (Pervasive Environment Sensing and Sharing), a novel Internet-enabled cost-effective product sensing air pollution and displaying data in an easy-to-use web application. In this way the end-user will be able to monitor the quality of air in real-time as well as to view historical information, e.g. over a given time period in the past.

In particular, end users will be able to deploy the PRESS box wherever they want, considering not only fixed locations such as houses and work-places, but also moving ones such as in cars or public transport. In fact, the PRESS box will be battery-enabled, allowing users to take it on short-to-medium trips, GPS-equipped to relate sensed information with geographical locations, and small/lightweight to be easily carried.

Moreover, end users will be able not only to monitor the data sensed by their own PRESS box, but also to get an aggregated view of the data sensed by PRESS boxes of other users in a given geographical area and in a specific time period. In this manner, while each PRESS box will be useful to gather information on the individual surrounding of specific users, the aggregated view will enhance knowledge of the quality of air of wider areas.

We strongly believe that the adoption of PRESS will lead to a substantial increase of the environmental awareness of citizens, providing them with real-time information on air pollution in a pervasive manner. In this way, citizens will be able to assess the overall quality of neighbourhoods/cities where they live, eventually triggering more environment-friendly habits and pushing them to ask municipalities to undertake stronger actions to improve the quality of their natural environments.

The Team

Carlo Giannelli (full time), based on his expertise as project manager and software engineering, will be in charge of 1) coordinating the members of the team to ensure the timely development of the project and 2) implementing part of the proof-of-concept, in particular part of the Web application.
Aldo Campi (full time), based on his expertise as project manager and electronics/embedded system engineer, will be in charge of 1) evaluating market-ready low-cost embedded platforms and air pollution sensors and selecting the best one(s) fitting hardware/software requirements of the product, 2) defining and submitting interviews and surveys to prospective customers, and 3) identifying the most promising market targets and customers.
Riccardo Zamagna (full time), based on his skills as software developer, will be in charge of 1) implementing the software to interact with sensors and send data to the Web application and 2) developing the GUI and (part of) the Web application.