Particulate matter air pollution is one of the most dangerous pollutants nowadays and an indirect cause of numerous diseases. A number of these consequences could possibly be avoided if the right information about air pollution were available at a large number of locations, especially in urban areas. Unfortunately, this is not the case today. In the whole of Europe, there are just approximately 3000 automated measuring stations for PM10, and only about 1400 stations equipped for PM2.5 measurement. In order to improve this issue and provide availability of real-time data about air pollution, different low-cost sensor-based solutions are being considered both on-field and in laboratory research. In this paper, we will present the results of PM particle monitoring using a self-developed Ecomar system. Measurements are performed in two cities in Montenegro, at seven different locations during several periods. In total, three Ecomar systems were used during 1107 days of on-field measurements. Measurements performed at two locations near official automated measuring stations during 610 days justified that the Ecomar system performance is satisfying in terms of reliability and measurement precision (NRMSE 0.33 for PM10 and 0.44 for PM2.5) and very high in terms of data validity and operating stability (Ecomar 94.13%-AMS 95.63%). Additionally, five distant urban/rural locations with different traffic, green areas, and nearby industrial objects were utilized to highlight the need for more dense spatial distributions of measuring locations. To our knowledge, this is the most extensive study of low-cost sensor-based air quality measurement systems in terms of the duration of the on-field tests in the Balkan region.
Keywords: Internet of Things; PM particles; air measurements; air pollution; air quality; sensors.