AirSense is an intelligent, residential IAQ monitoring and analytics system designed to increase people’s awareness of their IAQ and help manage it in their homes.

“Different pollution sources generate different types of pollutants in different ways,” said Zhang. “For example, oil-based cooking could generate remarkable amounts of harmful airborne particulate matter in a very short period of time that stay in the air for a long time. Household products such as disinfectants and pesticides contain and release numerous volatile organic compounds.

“Our technology leverages these differences to identify the source and forecast pollution levels to estimate the seriousness of the problem,” he said.

The technology also will provide a detailed weekly IAQ profiling report that helps people better understand how their household activities impact air quality.

Poor air quality could pose significant risks to people’s health and is the leading cause of respiratory infections, chronic lung diseases, and cancers.

“Our technology would be very helpful for people who are vulnerable to poor air quality, such as the elderly and children with asthma,” Zhang said.

Although currently designed for home use, AirSense could eventually be applied in public spaces such as office buildings, shopping malls, and subway stations.

Zhang said the team hopes the technology will be available for public use soon.

The work is published in the proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, held in Germany.

Other members of Zhang’s team include Biyi Fang and Taiwoo Park from Michigan State University and Qiumin Xu from the University of Southern California.

Publication date: 11/30/2016

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