The Hamburg Port Authority has used IoT sensors and the cloud to collect data on air quality and used the cloud to analyze that data in a bid to combat pollution.
The authority launched an Internet of Things (IoT) pilot project in March 2016 to record the emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and fine dust at various locations in the port of Hamburg using sensors.
The technical management of the project was carried out by IoT expert Kii in partnership with AQMesh, a manufacturer of air quality measuring devices. Emission values were collected centrally over the Kii IoT platform and prepared for analysis over a period of three months. The HPA could analyze the air quality at different locations in the port and, above all, test the functionality of different environmental sensors.
Sensors were placed at three different points of the harbor. The sensors detect nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter emissions and also provide data on temperature, air pressure or humidity, which are incorporated in later analyses by the HPA.
Pollution data analysis
All recorded sensor data were sent to the Kii IoT Platform via a gateway that the sensors talked to wirelessly. The Kii platform collected the data, prepared it, and made it available to HPA employees for analysis via APIs and on an intuitive web dashboard.
“The IoT pilot project has been very successful for us,” said Ulrich Baldauf, head of IT Strategy at HPA.
“We have been able to measure numerous parameters of air pollution live, e.g. the emission of particulate matter of particle size PM2.5 and PM10, or, in some cases, even nitrogen dioxides, which generally account for only 10 billionths of the total air. The Kii platform enabled us to collect the various data sources in a uniform manner and to prepare them for analysis.”
Martin Tantow, Kii EMEA general manager said the IoT pilot project has not only shown that his firm can implement complex projects in a timely and affordable manner, but also that there is a potential for real-time emission measurement for the port of Hamburg.
“Our IoT solution allowed us to install the sensors at critical points of the shipping and road network, to provide real-time visibility, and to prepare them for analysis. In Hamburg, Kii has demonstrated how effectively ports and cities can monitor air pollution through IoT,” he said.
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