Digital sensors will be attached to over 50 lamp posts in the city, identifying pollution hotspots and potentially shaping future policies after the city’s council teamed up with Swansea Bay company, .
The company’s ground-breaking sensors will be spread across the capital, identifying local pollution hotspots in real time and feeding that information back. Improved measurement will also reveal potential sources of pollution which may have previously been hidden, with the aim of improving air quality and health outcomes.
Vortex’s relatively inexpensive digital technology is something that is much needed as air pollution is believed to contribute to 2,000 deaths a year in Wales (6% of total deaths) and 30,000-40,000 across the 海角视频 (6-7 %).
The rollout is the latest success for Vortex, which has expertise in connected smart devices (IoT), as well as artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging LiDAR technologies. Last year, 70 digital sensors were attached to lamp posts in Margam, Taibach, Aberavon, Sandfields and Baglan Energy Park as part of Neath Port Talbot’s pilot air quality monitoring project. Vortex already has thousands of the sensors dotted across the 海角视频, including 500 in Hammersmith and Fulham.
A spokesperson for Vortex explained why the new technology is so crucial. He said: “our type of air pollution monitoring is more complementary to residents and local councils than the typical air pollution monitoring that is legislated by Defra. The Government only legislates monitoring using the Automatic Urban Rural Network (AURN) or council run reference stations and these are big reference stations that can cost up to a couple of hundred thousand pounds each. Diffusion tubes are also used, but whilst cheap, they only measure total nitrogen dioxide exposure over a month, giving no insight to how the levels of pollution vary from hour to hour.
“A lot of towns only have one reference station, although some big cities have more. It’s a blunt instrument monitoring approach that doesn't give that insight. We can give a very unique and new view of pollution on a street-by-street level which allows councils to inform residents on something that wasn’t known before. A lot of councils are contacting us about these monitors so they can give information to encourage behavioural change in residents.
“Schools are interested in making them a pollution safe area, too - but you still need monitors on surrounding streets because you don’t want residents to just park a couple of streets away as that’s just dispersing the pollution to places where other children or vulnerable groups live.”
The company is going from strength to strength, with plans to create more skilled engineering and advanced manufacturing jobs in the next year at its new home in the former Metal Box site in Neath.
It was also awarded Tech Company of the Year at the 2021 Swansea Bay Business Awards, as well as being acclaimed for its entrepreneurship through company founder, Adrian Sutton.
Vortex IOT is a proud sponsor of the Swansea Bay Business Awards 2022
To find out more about Vortex