Low-Cost Environmental Sensor Networks: Recent Advances and Future Directions

Abstract

The use of low-cost sensor networks (LCSNs) is becoming increasingly popular in the environmental sciences and the unprecedented monitoring data generated enable research across a wide spectrum of disciplines and applications. However, in particular, non-technical challenges still hinder the broader development and application of LCSNs. This paper reviews the development of LCSNs over the last 15 years, highlighting trends and future opportunities for a diverse range of environmental applications. We found air quality, meteorological and water-related networks were particularly well represented with few studies focusing on sensor networks for ecological systems. Furthermore, we identified bias toward studies that have direct links to human health, safety and livelihoods. These studies were more likely to involve downstream data analytics, visualizations, and multi-stakeholder participation through citizen science initiatives. However, there was a paucity of studies that considered sustainability factors for the development and implementation of LCSNs. Existing LCSNs are largely focused on detecting and mitigating events which have a direct impact on humans such as flooding, air pollution or geo-hazards, while these applications are important there is a need for future development of LCSNs for monitoring ecosystem structure and function. Our findings highlight three distinct opportunities for future research to unleash the full potential of LCSNs: (1) improvement of links between data collection and downstream activities; (2) the potential to broaden the scope of application systems and fields; and (3) to better integrate stakeholder engagement and sustainable operation to enable longer and greater societal impacts.

Citizens AND HYdrology (CANDHY): conceptualizing a transdisciplinary framework for citizen science addressing hydrological challenges

“…Participatory monitoring approaches and crowdsourcing (definition in Table 1) of citizen scientists are increasingly tested to fill this data gap in hydrology and related disciplines, thanks to distributed volunteers using manual instruments such as the rain gauge or more complete personal weather stations and other affordable environmental sensors (Buytaert et al, 2014, Cunha et al, 2017, Follett and Strezov, 2015, Kullenberg and Kasperowski, 2016, Mao et al, 2019, Trouille et al, 2019. Widely accessible technologies allow non-experts to easily gather, analyse, visualize and share a wealth of (Breuer et al, 2015, Michelsen et al, 2016, Njue et al, 2019, Sermet et al, 2019, Starkey et al, 2017, Tkachenko et al, 2017 that complements those from traditional monitoring networks and field surveys (Davids et al, 2019, Etter et al, 2018, Starkey et al, 2017.…”

A platform and protocol to standardise the test and selection low-cost sensors for water level monitoring

“…Studies often benchmark sensor performance in the field against manual water level readings, without quantifying their accuracy or precision. Extensive, standardised assessments of the performance of low-cost sensors are often lacking and there is now an increasing focus on data quality (Mao et al 2019). The diversity of sensor types and manufacturers represents an opportunity, but at the same time, it is the greatest concern due to reliability of the sensors (Kumar et al 2015).…”

“…Recent technological advances can support the development of new monitoring systems, including: falling costs, miniaturisation, ease-of-access, modularity, and open-source programming. Low-cost sensors and acquisition systems are already emerging in many fields (Mao et al 2019), such as in agriculture (Fisher 2007), air quality (Kumar et al 2015) and biodiversity (Hill et al 2019). Low-cost technologies have revolutionised air quality monitoring, offering massive increases in spatial and temporal data resolution (Morawska et al 2018).…”

Low-Cost, Open Source Wireless Sensor Network for Real-Time, Scalable Groundwater Monitoring

“…Low cost sensor networks (LCSNs) are constructed from affordable, telemetry-enabled sensors rising in use across various fields due to their low financial cost, ability to provide real-time data, and general ability to outperform traditional in situ measurements in terms of cost, scalability, and volume of obtained measurements ( Figure 1a) [26]. However, sensor hardware is only half of a monitoring system-software is also needed to manage, clean, store, and visualize the data collected by sensors.…”

“…However, sensor hardware is only half of a monitoring system-software is also needed to manage, clean, store, and visualize the data collected by sensors. Many commercial sensor network applications integrate real-time data streams with online analytics and visualizations to monitor human safety [26]. Thus, analytics and visualizations built with open source software provide one way to dramatically reduce LCSN cost.…”