With urbanization and economic development, there is more pollution of air in urban areas, which exposes people to diseases that are linked to this polluted air. Such diseases include cardiovascular and respiratory ailments, along with cancer. Experts and organizations working for cleaner air in Africa recently met in Yaounde to discuss how they can cooperate to monitor air quality using sensor technology.
Until now, measurement has been costly, but there have been advances, said Deo Okure, an air quality scientist at Kenya's Makerere University. Together with fellow researchers, Okure developed a local air monitoring system in 2015 that is cheap but effective. One advantage is that the system can be operated with different energy sources.
"At the same time," he said, "instead of requiring Wi-Fi, we are able to transmit data through the GSM or the SIM card that is used in all parts of Africa." Although the technology provides important data, it is insufficient, Okure said, because it cannot yet clearly identify the sources of air pollution.
In Yaounde, another project has installed devices that monitor air quality in real time. Despite technological limitations, Ashu Ngono Stephanie, from Cameroon's National Meteorological Department, expects that this will make it easier to keep an eye on dust.
[
add
]
[
|
|
...
]