With the emergence of connected microsensors on the market, the national air quality monitoring system (the Ministry of the Environment, the LCSQA and the Official Air Quality Monitoring Associations - AASQA) has taken an interest in the reliability of these new devices. Currently, there is no national or European framework of standards for comparing the performance of these different devices to that of reference measuring instruments.
As part of their work for the LCSQA, Ineris and IMT Lille Douai are now coordinating the first national field proficiency test of gas and particle microsensors installed on fixed sites. The test is a continuation of the work initiated in their laboratories over the past two years to determine the performance characteristics of microsensors (see LCSQA’s 2017 report).
Running from the beginning of January to mid-February 2018 at all the AASQAs and manufacturers that volunteered, the test’s objective is to place a large number of different systems in real conditions in an urban setting, in order to assess their proficiency in monitoring the primary pollutants in ambient air: nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3) and particles (PM2.5 and PM10).
Organized by IMT Lille Douai at its Research Center’s air quality measuring station (GPS coordinates: 50.384185, 3.084655), the test currently has 14 participants and a total of 44 devices of varying design and origin (France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Poland, the United States). Ineris will use the data to compare with reference measurement instruments. In addition to the metrological performance of these instruments, close attention is paid to other parameters, such as ease of installation, autonomy, portability, reliability of communication (GSM, Wifi, Bluetooth, wires, etc.), user-friendliness of data collection applications, and quality/price ratio when factoring in the desired objective.
A public report on the test will be published in the summer of 2018 and made available at www.lcsqa.org (under Publications).
More tests of the same kind will be conducted at different times of year on the same site or in other locations in order to account for factors such as seasonality and typology.
Contacts: sabine.crunaire@imt-lille-douai.fr; caroline.marchand@ineris.fr
