Environmental monitoring and management is growing more and more important, as managing our surroundings and understanding our impacts drives increasing amounts of regulation and activities to help reduce pollution and other impacts in the environment.
IoT sensors are able to give accurate real-time data on the environment around us to help us understand how we affect it and take actions to reduce negative impact.
IoT in environmental monitoring can cover such a broad area of scenarios from monitoring hot water temperatures for the risk of legionella to earthquake or tsunami early-warning systems. Providing real time data of things such as weather conditions, humidity, air quality, CO2 emissions, water quality, water flow, temperatures, airborne chemicals and many other environment indicators.
Such data can be invaluable not only in understanding our impact on the environment around us be also improving our safety and well-being.
As an example, within college classrooms elevated levels of carbon dioxide from the air can lead to lethargy, drowsiness, headaches and difficulties concentrating.
Government legislation advises that concentration amounts of gases such as CO2 should not exceed an average reading across the day of 1500 ppm (parts per million).
By simply integrating CO2 tracking, the Internet of Things and automated ventilation systems these levels can be monitored and reduced.
The installation of IoT enabled sensors makes it feasible to take more frequent readings where cost might be prohibitive or where they might simply be logistically too difficult to reach regularly.
