Triple-Network Air Quality Monitoring and Carbon Credit Trading Platform for Sustainable Urban Environments

In response to a growing demand for air quality monitoring and carbon control solutions, the project aims to develop an intelligent air quality monitoring, analytic and carbon trading platform. It will allow the measuring and forecasting of air quality status, pollution levels and providing timely scientific evidence that can be used for carbon trading. The system is optimised for speedy deployment with minimal additional infrastructure investment. Compared to a traditional monitoring system, the system has the characteristics of low-cost, installation portability and easy information access with comprehensive air quality measuring sensors for PM2.5, CO2, NO2, PM10, VOCs etc., it also explores the feasibility of linking carbon dioxide emission directly to a carbon trading platform for carbon control and greenhouse gas emission reduction. The system will be built on the combined advantages provided by three networks. It adopts advanced technology in wireless sensor system, IoT, intelligent multi-sensor fusion, and AI solutions for big data processing. In-depth back-end analytics and predication models are built using state of art technology in machine learning and data mining to enable a carbon trading platform to be developed for a series of end-to-end trading.

The whole system has four layers:

• Triple-network sensor hardware layer for real-time air quality measurement;

• Cloud, big data and AI layer for data analytics, forecasting and abnormal alerting;

• Air quality service layer to provide various data and services;

• Carbon trading layer allowing online carbon credit trading and financing activities.

Innovations of the project include:

• Compact, low-cost, easy deployment of the sensor unit;

• AI and machine learning solutions for pollution assessment and prediction;

• Integration of cloud-based big data and carbon emission analysis with carbon credit trading platforms.

This project is supported by Newton Fund & Innovate UK

(Project No. 104314)