By Ian Longley When it comes to tracking the emission and dispersion of smoke there’s a lot you could learn just by watching. Are cameras a viable smoke monitoring tool? When I’ve been asked about the monitoring of smoke, I automatically think of instruments that...
BLOG: Air Sensors and Monitoring
Making screening of smaller towns easy – like Woodville
By Ian Longley Outside our major centres, New Zealand is a country of many small towns separated by long drives. The harder somewhere is to get to, the more likely it is tucked away in a valley or basin, and the more likely it is to rely on wood for home heating. How...
Sensors we use and why we like them
By: Gustavo Olivares Because of its significant cost, monitoring air quality used to only be available to government agencies. However, over the past decade, cheaper air quality sensors have made it to the market and have been used in earnest by many people, from...
Being smarter with a limited monitoring budget
For years, the emergence of low-cost sensors has offered a potential solution for councils to maintain environmental monitoring under continual pressure to reduce budgets. But used smartly, these sensors offer a whole lot more than just cost savings. They offer the...
Go South, HALO South funding for NZ participation and support.
By: Guy Coulson We are pleased to announce that again, alongside our colleagues at the University of Canterbury, we have been awarded a Smart Idea grant (Optimizing Next-Generation Climate Model Precipitation Projections for Improved Climate Resilience) from the...
MBIE supports AQC to collaborate with German Climate Scientists
By: Guy Coulson We are very happy to announce that the Air Quality Collective along with our colleagues at the University of Canterbury have been awarded $415,000 by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Strategic Catalyst fund for a project called...
AirGrid: Sensor grids to map airborne particulate matter across towns and cities
By: Ian Longley To create a map of air quality across a town or city you used to have spend significant resources setting up and maintaining a sparse air quality monitoring network and then apply uncertain models which rely on emissions data you don’t usually have....
Why is Particulate Matter so special?
By: Gustavo Olivares Air pollution is one of those things, like weather and climate, that because it affects everyone we all have an opinion about it. This makes it an ideal area for "citizen" and "traditional" scientists to collaborate and work towards improving our...
How good is good enough?
By: Gustavo OlivaresChasing the dream of accurate and reliable low cost sensors in air qualityFor quite a few years now, there are a number of projects around consumer level (as opposed to research grade) air quality sensors. (Air Quality Egg, Speck, Dustduino, Air...
What is air pollution?
So what is air pollution? Pollution is bad. The word ‘pollution’ conjures up images of something dark, something menacing, something nasty that turns up where it shouldn’t. The notion of something clean and pure being invaded by something repulsive or distasteful that...










