Measuring air pollution at sea (10.30hr)

Project description

We are to develop a sniffer system which could be mounted on a drone. The sniffer has to measure air emission from ships and send this data to a base station. The drone and base station are out of scope for this project.

Context

Ships at sea and in harbors cause a lot of air pollution. Strict EU governmental rules are in place to reduce the emissions of the shipping sector and reduce the negative impact they have on the environment. One of the strategies used to enforce the governmental rules is to monitor, report and verify emissions from individual ships. In Denmark, remotely piloted drones with a ‘sniffer system’ attached, are used to take on this task and to monitor the emissions of ships. This solution is, at the moment, not widely used/adopted in the EU. Partly because of the total cost of the total system ( RPAS drone + sniffer).

Results

We have summarized the regulations relevant to the project and figured out the best way of identifying ships. We have designed a software solution that, with the right hardware, can function according to these regulations and fulfill the desired goal.
The main outcome of the research is that cherry-picking ships for closer inspection is more suited than the original goal.

About the project group

We are 4th year students at the Fontys bachelor ICT and Technology programme. We have worked for 17 weeks on this project, 2 days a week.