Air Quality Monitoring for Sustainable Development in Cluj-Napoca

Apart from affecting citizens health and wellbeing across urban and rural areas, air pollution has significant economic implications which inhibit progress, especially for developing countries. The role of air quality monitoring to ensure population wellness is a key topic in the current pursuit for the sustainable development goals, promoting active response from decision-makers to address acute socio-environmental challenges and to promote a resilient and sustainable future. In this study, an integrated air quality monitoring system was proposed within the municipality of Cluj-Napoca, by adopting a novel methodology for sensor-placement throughout the city, composing an efficient network of stations with high spatial and temporal resolution. The purpose of this network is to assist the population and local authorities by providing a platform that offers real-time mapped data related to local air quality and potential health threats. This approach was based upon a thorough geospatial data analysis of land-use in the area, where possible correlations between air quality and anthropic activities that generate emissions were studied. Using these factors, an analysis of possible placement locations was carried out, in order to determine the most representative network shape that would reflect the air quality variations throughout different locations of the study area and will prove to be cost-efficient by using a limited number of sensors. A series of maps with various networks morphologies, were generated and compared. An innovative method of using a “natural pattern”-based approach for the network morphology, proved to be the most efficient in fulfilling all the proposed requirements of the network.