Posts tagged "environnement"

IRIT and Laboratoire d’Aérologie, Toulouse University

Keywords

Bicycle traffic, Urban mobility, Air quality, Urban pollution, Agent based simulation, Synthetic population

Excessive concentrations of pollutants in the urban air are regularly observed, posing a long-term danger to the health of inhabitants. Monitoring the quality of urban air is therefore a very important issue to help stakeholders to take appropriate measures (reduction of road traffic...). The urban spatial distribution of air pollution is very heterogeneous and evolves rapidly over time. It is therefore important to develop reliable, fast, and spatially spread measurement methods. This last criterion is often hard to implement. For example, air quality measuring stations are very accurate, but their measurements are too local to obtain information on areas with no station.

In this work, we propose to study the usage of residents' daily bicycle traffic as a participatory network of air quality sensors, providing volunteer cyclists with an air quality sensor to use during their daily commute. To evaluate the effectiveness of such a network, we choose to build a multi-agent simulation based on the GAMA development environment that models a group of bicycle-mounted sensors mapping urban air quality. Traces of urban air quality collected by the sensors are then used to infer air quality at the city level. Results are compared with actual data from public air administration.

The model simulates the daily mobility of a synthetic population of cyclists in the city. Travel and pollution data are generated based on several real data sources (mobiloscope, private companies, and bicycle sensors). Observations recorded along the bike trips are complemented by geographical information (height of buildings, natural areas, distance to highway, …) that are obtained through Geographical information systems (GIS) and further used as predictor variables in a land use regression (LUR) model.

The dataset of synthetic information is used to infer a critical number of bicycles that would be required for an optimal assessment of the intra-urban air quality. To this end, we process the collected pollution data, for each time step, with extrapolation algorithms (eg. LUR) of the measured pollution concentrations and the city environment. For example, the distance of a point to primary roads is a relevant indicator for determining NO2 concentration. Thus, by performing a regression to estimate the relationship between the distance to the main roads and NO2 concentration, we can predict the NO2 concentration at unmeasured points. Moreover, the impact of the cyclists' circadian rhythm on the monitoring of the daily cycle of pollutants is investigated. We also evaluate the opportunity for cross-calibrating the mobile sensors during the biker's Rendez-vous based on the daily agenda of the different biker categories.

Scientific goal

The objective is to understand how well a network of bicycle-mounted sensors could map air quality in urban areas.

Contact

Nathan Coisne (Nathan.coisne_at_student.isae-supaero.fr)

Jean-François Léon (jean-francois.leon_at_isae-supaero.fr)

Nicolas Verstaevel (nicolas.verstaevel_at_irit.fr)

Benoit Gaudou (benoit.gaudou_at_irit.fr)

Elsy Kaddoum (elsy.kaddoum_at_irit.fr)

Labs: Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Environnement – CRCA – SETE – IRIT – LAAS – GEODE

Companies: BeeGuard, Select Design, Adict Solutions

Keywords

Environmental monitoring, connected sentinels, bio-indicators, bees, birds, aquatic eco-markers, IoT. 

The use of bio-indicators makes it possible to characterize, in an integrative and quantitative manner, natural or anthropogenic changes in the environment. However, monitoring the response of bio-indicator organisms is often a difficult and time-consuming task, particularly in the field. Hence the interest in developing automated approaches, taking advantage of technological developments in terms of environmental sensors, remote transmission and processing of data. 

Scientific goal

The ECONECT project began in early 2020, with the objective to develop a communication infrastructure allowing the remote monitoring of autonomous, connected and versatile systems to measure the responses of bio-indicator organisms to chemical contamination, habitat degradation and global warming.

Three sentinel systems are considered: (1) the connected hive, allowing to monitor the dynamics of bee colonies (colony mass, temperature and location of the bee cluster, foraging traffic, etc.) and the cognitive capacities of bees; (2) the connected bird-feeder to submit individually monitored tits to behavioral tests to assess their cognitive abilities; (3) the aquacosm, a floating enclosure allowing the measurement of eco-markers in an aquatic environment (growth dynamics of phototrophic biofilms, relative importance of autotrophic and heterotrophic processes within the ecosystem ...).

The network infrastructure, based on LoRa and GSM communication protocols, will allow the remote configuration of measurement devices and the data transmission in the Cloud for consultation from a web browser and automated processing, in quasi real time, using a modular approach based on Python scripts. The storage on a server of all the data collected will allow an integrated analysis of these and the generation of alerts in case of hardware malfunctions or measures reflecting an abnormal situation within the ecosystem studied.

Prototypes of the different sentinel systems and the network are being tested and will lead to the installation of two pilot stations in 2021, notably one on the Paul Sabatier campus. In 2022, a network of 12 sentinel stations will be deployed in the Zone Atelier Pyrénées-Garonne (PYGAR). Each station will be characterized by a spatial analysis of land use and the quality of habitats and by the measurement of concentrations of chemical contaminants (trace metal elements, PAHs, pesticides) in different compartments of the environment. Participatory science protocols will be used to supplement the available data set and to assist in the interpretation of observed trends, while providing environmental education opportunities for the general public.

Contact

Elger, A., Cauchoix, M., Lihoreau, M., Chaine, A., Kacimi, R., Raimbault, V., Riboul, D., Julien, M.P., Lubat, C., Guiraud, V. & Depasse, J.

LAPLACE / LERASS – University Toulouse III Paul Sabatier

Context presentation

When it comes to evaluate the quantifiable effects of products or services on the environment, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is probably the most efficient and recognized tool. Thanks to a “cradle to grave” approach, LCA identifies and quantifies, throughout the life of products, the physical flows of matter and energy associated with human activities (extraction of raw materials, manufacturing of the product, distribution, use, collection and disposal towards end-of-life). For each of its flows correspond impact indicators which allow to establish the overall potential impact of the system on our environment.

With regard to lighting, ultra-efficient lighting have made it possible to improve energy efficiency during use phase and thus greatly limit its impact on the environment. Before the development of these new technologies, lighting represented 14% of European consumption and 19% of global electricity consumption (2009). Today, the UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) estimates it at 15 % worldwide (2,940 TWh) for 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In France, the total electricity consumption due to lighting is 56 TWh, emitting 5.6 million tonnes of CO2 (Ademe - 2017).

However, despite major advances in terms of energy efficiency, many direct or indirect impacts on our environment, our health, well-being and productivity are not considered, and we can no longer neglect these impacts.

It is then necessary to define a new methodology, which will allow the extension of the classic LCA by taking into account several economic, health and social criteria, in particular regarding the potential impacts on human (impacts on circadian rhythms); the impacts on ecosystems (light pollution); the several uses of light (residential, commercial, public lighting, etc.); or even social acceptability on and by the user of the system (security, comfort, working conditions, etc.).

The aggregation of these criteria, with a classic life cycle assessment and a life cycle cost analysis (cumulative cost of a product throughout its life cycle), will give a global vision (economic, social and environmental) of the potential impacts of lighting and will helps to define a decision support tool for establishing coherent and appropriate strategies around the transformation of our lighting systems.

Keywords

LED, Lighting, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Cost (LCC), Efficacy, Lifetime

Scientific goals

- Define the characteristics of a LED lamp and in particular the duo [Lifespan

- Efficacy] for it to be considered the most efficient system according to the different energy mixes.

- Define the economic optimum for the lifetime of the lamps, depending on the type of use.

- Quantify and compare the circadian impact and light pollution with the impact categories of LCA.

- Evaluate the most efficient systems for horticultural lighting.

Contact

kevin.bertin_at_laplace.univ-tlse.fr

Context Presentation

The ECONECT project began in early 2020, with the objective to develop a communication infrastructure allowing the remote monitoring of autonomous, connected, and versatile systems to measure the responses of bioindicator organisms to chemical contamination, habitat degradation and global warming.

Three sentinel systems are considered:(1) the connected hive, allowing to monitor the dynamics of bee colonies (colony mass, temperature and location of the bee cluster, foraging traffic, etc.) and the cognitive capacities of bees; (2) the connected bird-feeder to submit individually monitored tits to behavioral tests to assess their cognitive abilities; (3) the aquacosm, a floating enclosure allowing the measurement of eco-markers in an aquatic environment (growth dynamics of phototrophic biofilms, relative importance of autotrophic and heterotrophic processes within the ecosystem ...).

In 2022, a network of 12 sentinel stations will be deployed in the Zone Atelier Pyrénées-Garonne (PYGAR). Each station will be characterized by a spatial analysis of land use and the quality of habitats and by the measurement of concentrations of chemical contaminants (trace metal elements, PAHs, pesticides) in different compartments of the environment. Participatory science protocols will be used to supplement the available data set and to assist in the interpretation of observed trends, while providing environmental education opportunities for the public.

Keywords

Environmental sensor; Bioindicator; Animal cognition; Chemical status; Landscape integrity; Artificial intelligence

Scientific goals

•    to design a communicating infrastructure to collect data from different sensors in the field;

•    to develop automated tools for the real-time analysis of collected data, for extracting their ecological significance;

•    to examine the relevance of our sentinel systems to assess the quality of the environment, particularly in terms of chemical status and landscape integrity.

Contact

arnaud.elger_at_univ-tlse3.fr

LEFE, SGE, IRIT, Toulouse University / IMFT, La Rochelle University / PME Epurteck

Keywords

Living Lab, water, filter, biodiversity, tomography

A Water oriented Living lab on the campus gets applied and fundamental research components with the main goal to reduce the surface area of the “regular” planted filters by making them more performing toward filtration with the involvement of an increased biodiversity. This demonstrator makes part of the LL implementation in the Interreg SUDOE Tr@nsnet Project. A cooperation between UT3 Direction du Patrimoine, SGE, UMR IRIT, UMR IMFT, U La Rochelle, PME Epurteck will lead to a bioinpired filter located next to IRIT to treat waste water of the A1 building. This biotech with enhanced biodiversity and soil metabolism for organic mater biodegradation, will increase the green area of the campus, will help at the air temperature regulation , and prevent of any smelt and musquitos for the neighbourhood. The earth worms (are ecological engineers that dig biostructure networks in the soil, that may largely influence the water parameters when flowing through this soil. The current tested research hypotheses is: « how does a burrow network buried in the macroporous substrates of soils influence the water infiltration capacities ? » This is run through the cooperation between research group in Physic “MacroPorous media and Biology” of UMR IMFT and the FERMAT X-ray tomography for images of 3D gallery networks of worms burrow, and modeling of water infiltration water flux in porous media; and the ecological team Bioref (Biodiversity, biological networks and Fluxes in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems) of UMR Laboratory of Functional Ecology and Environment

Constant-head permeameter                               

Burrow network dig by one worm after 1 weak

Scientific goals

Create a demonstration of the biodiversity (earth worms) influence on the water infiltration in the planted filter.

Use the water oriented living lab connected with a serie of IoT sensors to explore further research hypotheses about organic mater degradation,  water and pollutant flow in this type of new filter generation.

Contact

magali.gerino_at_univ-tlse3.fr

Context Presentation

neOCampus is a large operation with different kinds of projects and actors. Started in 2013, its goal is to improve the university campus user’s everyday life through data analysis for people, fluid consummation reduction, reduce building environmental footprint, etc.… Overall, it tends to make the campus smarter. All those projects have one common point: data. Including images, sensor logs, administrative data, configurations, we can find every kind of data and each must be stored somewhere.

This project is centered around this problem with a data management system architecture which is the data lake.The conception of this kind of solution must include handling every kind of data and making it possible to follow the life of a data from the input to the usage in a project. It does not only have to store every kind of data, it is needed to know what is stored, where and in the proper format to use it in the easiest way. When a new data has arrived, the system will automatically rawly store it, find the more valuable format, extract information from this data and make this knowledge available for any purpose.

 Keywords

Data Lake, Data Driven Project, Big Data, Data Management, Data Analysis

Scientific goal

•    To develop a datalake architecture to change the architecture of the data management system in neOCampus.

Contacts

dang.vincentnam@gmail.com, françois.thiebolt@irit.fr, olivier.teste@irit.fr

Context Presentation

When it comes to evaluate the quantifiable effects of products or services on the environment, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is probably the most efficient and recognized tool. Thanks to a “cradle to grave” approach, LCA identifies and quantifies, throughout the life of products, the physical flows of matter and energy associated with human activities (extraction of raw materials, manufacturing of the product, distribution, use, collection and disposal towards end-of-life). For each of its flows correspond impact indicators which allow to establish the overall potential impact of the system on our environment. With regard to lighting, “smart” technologies have made it possible to improve energy efficiency during use phase and thus greatly limit its impact on the environment.

Before the development of these new technologies, lighting represented 14% of European consumption and 19% of global electricity consumption (2009). Today, the UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) estimates it at 15 % worldwide (2,940 TWh) for 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions (1,150 million tonnes of CO2). However, despite major advances in terms of energy efficiency, many direct or indirect impacts on our environment, our health, well-being and productivity are not considered, and we can no longer neglect these impacts.

It is then necessary to define a new methodology, which will allow the extension of the classic LCA by taking into account several health and social criteria, in particular regarding the potential ”impacts on human” ( blue light and impacts on circadian rhythms); the "impacts on ecosystems" (light pollution, potential impacts on insects and plants population); the several “uses of light” (residential, commercial, public lighting, etc.); or even "social acceptability on and by the user of the system" (security, comfort, working conditions, etc.). The aggregation of these criteria, with a classic life cycle assessment and a life cycle cost analysis (cumulative cost of a product throughout its life cycle), will give a global vision (economic, social and environmental) of the potential impacts of lighting and will helps to offer a decision support tool for establishing coherent and appropriate strategies around the transformation of our lighting systems.

Keywords

Life Cycle Assessment, LED, Lighting Systems, Environmental Impacts

Scientific goal

•    Evaluating the global impacts of lighting technologies, and helping the decision making regarding lighting strategies.

Contact

kevin.bertin@laplace.univ-tlse.fr

Le projet VILAGIL porté par Toulouse Métropole, Tisséo, le SICOVAL et le PETR Portes de Gascogne a été retenu par l’Etat dans le cadre de l’appel à projets « Territoires d’Innovation » comme annoncé par le Premier Ministre ce vendredi 13 septembre. Il entend améliorer les conditions de déplacements à Toulouse.

Le dossier de presse est disponible ici

Un article de presse en parle ici

Context Presentation

Foraging for food to substantiate one’s needs is of great importance for every species. In the case of bees, who are a social species, only a small selection of individuals has the task to bring the food for the whole colony, and thus has to take into account the needs of the entire population in terms of nutrients. As central place foragers, bees will explore and exploit flowers around their nest, where different species provide bees with different amounts and qualities of nectar. Bees are as a result faced with a complex problem: finding flowers that are not already exploited by other bees, which provide the nutrients in the right amount (either by foraging on a single species of flowers with a balanced diet, or on multiple species with unbalanced but complementary diets), and create a stabilized exploitation route between them. Following each individual bee in its foraging trip has been a technological challenge. However, today, as different tracking technologies (radars, camera tracking) are being developed, assisted with colony monitoring systems (connected hives), we can finally get some insights on these complex behaviors. As data are still scarce and only available in limited, simplified situations, building theoretical models that successfully replicate the spatial strategies of bees will allow us to make predictions on more complex and ecologically relevant scenarios.

Scientific Goals

- Conduct experimental tests for the fundamental hypotheses of the behavior.

- Build a new model based on experimental tests of simple situations and theoretical knowledge of bee foraging behavior.

- Test the model’s predictions in complex environmental situations.

Keywords

Spatial strategy, foraging behavior, nutritional geometry, connected hive

Contacts

thibault.dubois@univ-tlse3.frmathieu.lihoreau@univ-tlse3.fr

Context Presentation

When it comes to identifying and measuring the quantifiable effects of products or services on the environment, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is probably the most powerful and recognized tool. Thanks to a multicriterion and a cradle-to-grave approach, LCA identifies and quantifies, throughout the life of products, the physical flows of matter and energy associated with human activities (extraction of raw materials required for the manufacture of the product, distribution, use, collection and disposal to end-of-life systems and all phases of transport). For each of its flows, there are impact indicators that establish the overall potential impact of the system on our environment.

During past years, smart lighting technologies allowed significant improvements regarding lamp efficiency during use phase (from 19% to 15% of global electricity consumption), nevertheless, there are direct or indirect impacts on our environment, health, well-being or productivity not taken into account into Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies, and we can’t no longer neglected them.

Figure 1: Impacts assessment of lighting systems

Scientific Goals

- How to extend LCA methodology in order to determine which lighting system is most performant regarding environmental, economic and social aspect?

- How using phase could impact on lamp overall performance (Light Loss Factor, Mean Time Before Failure and Maintenance Factor)?

- Which criteria should be used to reflect lighting impact on human health or ecosystems during use phase?

Keywords

Lighting systems, Life Cycle Assessment, Circadian effect, Life cycle Cost, Multicriterion analysis.

Contacts

kevbertin@gmail.com – bertin@laplace.univ-tlse.frEncadrants : georges.zissis@laplace.univ-tlse.fr , marc2.mequignon@free.fr