Researchers Improve Environmental Monitoring Applications

A research team from Wayne State University’s National Institutes of Health-funded Superfund Research Program, the Center for Leadership in Environmental Awareness and Research (CLEAR), recently developed a new technique that couples the Internet of Things sensor network with Edge Computing (IoTEC) to improve environmental monitoring. The team tested their sensor packages in two pilot applications to monitor vapor intrusion of pollution moving from air spaces in soil to indoor air and algae cultivation in wastewater. The results showed a reduction in unnecessary data transmission and data latency, as well as an estimated cost reduction of 55-82% for vapor intrusion monitoring. Additionally, the team used machine learning tools with IoTEC to monitor and predict system performance of wastewater-based algae cultivation.