IoT-based climate monitoring

Heavy rainfall, floods, heatwaves, droughts, extreme cold and storms are occurring more frequently and more intensively. The increasing effects of climate change pose considerable challenges for cities and municipalities in building a resilient urban structure. Past extreme weather events clearly show how closely the nature and functioning of urban spaces are linked to the planning and construction of the surrounding buildings and infrastructure, and the mutually reinforcing effects that can be observed. Despite these obvious correlations, there is currently a lack of a valid information base that can provide an up-to-date monitoring overview of the local status quo (e.g. where is it particularly warm?) and that enables the testing of various what-if scenarios using the potential of current, intelligent technologies. Small-scale climate data can help to make more informed decisions in the context of urban and spatial planning.

Fields of application of IoT-based climate monitoring: 

• Hazard analyses and urban climate analyses (status quo and what-if scenarios) 
• Identification of danger spots such as heat islands and derivation of countermeasures such as unsealing, greening, heat warnings and targeted tree and plant irrigation 
• Monitoring measures and their effects 
• Recognising small-scale interactions and deriving better planning parameters 
• Creating transparency and acceptance through citizen participation (OpenCitySense approach) 

Sensor technology and artificial intelligence can be used effectively to protect against the negative consequences of these events. Sensors can be used to monitor important environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity, soil moisture, wind speed and rainfall. This data enables us to detect current potential hazards on a small scale. Continuous monitoring enables us to react in good time to developing extreme weather events as well as recognise previously undetected small-scale interactions in the city and derive sensible protective measures.

Research focus of IoT-based climate monitoring: 

• Possibilities of issuing climate information based on small-scale measurements such as temperature, air pressure, soil moisture and precipitation 
• Use of various measurement techniques such as radar, ultrasound and optical measurement methods as well as communication networks such as LoRaWAN, NoB-IoT and LTE-M 
• Anomaly detection and data corrections (AI-based) 
• Sensor placement design (where does which sensor make sense?)  
• Understanding small-scale interdependencies (How much sensor technology do we need for what?) 
• How can dynamic and static data be combined?