Use existing urban infrastructures to measure air quality: Smart Poles of Westenergie and Hawa Dawa devices intelligently combined
Hawa Dawa is working with Westenergie AG’s Smart Pole Factory. In a project of the company in Essen, Hawa Dawa Sentience air measuring devices are installed in smart pole lights.
In a smart city, information on air quality can provide citizens with real value and, for example, help to improve the city’s transport planning. The Hawa Dawa air measuring devices are now being used in a pilot project of Westenergie. Together with the city of Essen and the Essen era supply and transport company mbH (EVV), Westenergie is testing intelligent street lights here. The so-called smart poles are equipped with sensors that also detect the parking space, for example. In addition to particulate matter, ozone and nitrogen, the Hawa Dawa Sentience devices also collect environmental data. The air quality data is transmitted to the Westenergie platform, which prepares this data for the municipalities and provides a clear presentation on the dashboard. On the six digital screens attached to the smart poles, information on local air quality can also be displayed directly to citizens.
Karim Tarraf, Managing Director of Hawa Dawa, explains: “We know from our discussions with municipalities that the Smart City initiatives are designed to make the urban environment more livable in an efficient way. Hawa Dawa solutions start right here: they can be used in both existing and new structures to digitally display air quality information efficiently and comprehensively. The cooperation with Westenergie in Essen shows what this can look like in reality. Intelligent street lighting is an important infrastructure element of a smart city. Also, our de
vices are designed in such a way that urban LoRaWan or GSM is used for data transfer. In this way, the bundling of individual technologies into holistic solutions brings significant added value for cities and citizens and focuses on improving the quality of life. Solution ecosystems are the economic form of the future. We are open to presenting the data ourselves in our dashboard products or, as in the case of Essen, to make the data available via an interface (API) for further use.”
Hawa Dawa’s approach is, as far as possible and sufficient, to use existing infrastructure and air quality measurements to make relevant air quality information available. The display of air quality information, which is processed depending on the application, can be carried out on an intuitive dashboard or by direct integration into downstream systems – e.g. for environmentally sensitive traffic control. Where the existing data density is not sufficient for the application, the installation of Hawa Dawa Sentience IoT measuring instruments can cost-effectively add additional measuring points.
