Research project

MESSAGE: Mobile Environmental Sensing System Across a Grid Environment

Lead researchers:

Emeritus Professor Mike Mcdonald
Other researchers:

Dr Ben Waterson
Research funder:

EPSRC
Status:

Not active

Project overview

The impacts of road traffic on local air quality and individuals’ exposure to air pollution are major public policy concerns, but such research requires increasingly detailed knowledge of how traffic-generated pollution behaves in the urban environment and can therefore only be undertaken based on the availability of high quality, high-granularity spatial-temporal environmental sensor data.

This project (led by Imperial College) aimed to address this data requirement and demonstrate its benefits by novel combination and extension of state-of-the-art e-Science, sensor and positioning technologies, data fusion, traveller behaviour, traffic modelling and emissions dispersion modelling techniques, based on combinations of pervasive roadside and vehicle/person-mounted sensors.

Within the consortium TRG were responsible for the traveller behaviour research strand, assessing forms of environmental traveller information (including a pollution-aware route planning system), the mechanisms for delivery of the information to travellers, and the short and long term behavioural responses that such information can facilitate.