A Case of Urban PM Measurements with IoT Sensors: Issues and Solutions

We present a campaign of particulate matter density measurements carried out in the city of Bologna during 2024, a period of extended roadwork activities, with the aim of monitoring local air pollution with respect to the usual background. Measurements were obtained with IoT sensors in optical technology and data collected through a LoraWAN network. Thanks to its flexibility it was possible to install and manage a large number of sensors resulting in a series of measurements densely distributed both in space and time; on the other hand we must be aware of the technical limitations of low-cost sensors that reflects in measures that are in no way accurate and reliable as those collected by certified instruments. We report the preliminary results and describe our attempts to produce a set of PM measurements that reliably reproduce the overall behavior of more complex and expensive instruments.