Assessment of the impact of sensor error on the representativeness of population exposure to urban air pollutants

For the monitoring of urban air pollution, smart sensors are often seen as a welcome addition to fixed-site monitoring (FSM) networks. Due to price and simple installation, increases in spatial representation are thought to be achieved by large numbers of these sensors, however, a number of sensor errors have been identified. Based on a high-resolution modelling system, up to 400 pseudo smart sensors were perturbated with the aim of simulating common sensor errors and added to the existing FSM network in Hong Kong, resulting in 1200 pseudo networks for PM2.5 and 1040 pseudo networks for NO2. For each pseudo network, population-weighted area representativeness (PWAR) was calculated based on similarity frequency. For PM2.5, improvements (up to 16%) to the high baseline representativeness (PWAR = 0.74) were achievable only by the addition of high-quality sensors and favourable environmental conditions. The baseline FSM network represents NO2 less well (PWAR = 0.52), as local emissions in the study domain resulted in high spatial pollution variation. Due to higher levels of pollution (population-weighted average 37.3 ppb) in comparison to sensor error ranges, smart sensors of a wider quality range were able to improve network representativeness (up to 42%). Marginal representativeness increases were found to exponentially decrease with existing sensor number. The quality and maintenance of added sensors had a stronger effect on overall network representativeness than the number of sensors added. Often, a small number of added sensors of a higher quality class led to larger improvements than hundreds of lower-class sensors. Whereas smart sensor performance and maintenance are important prerequisites particularly for developed cities where pollutant concentration is low and there is an existing FSM network, our study shows that for places with high pollutant variability and concentration such as encountered in some developing countries, smart sensors will provide benefits