Smart city developments: Pilot case study of smart benches usage for impact assessment due to exposure to air pollution in the urban environment
- 1Institute for Environmental Research and Sustainable Development, National Observatory of Athens (NOA), 15236 Penteli, Attiki Greece
- 2Physics Department, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), 157 84, Athens, Attiki Greece
Abstract
Air pollution remains one of the leading environmental risk factors for morbidity and mortality worldwide and its impacts are most acutely felt in dense urban environments where residents can be exposed to elevated pollutant levels for extended periods each day. Reliable, spatially resolved exposure and health-impact data at the neighborhood scale are still scarce, limiting the ability of municipalities to design targeted mitigation measures. To help close this gap, the present pilot study uses a low-cost, IoT-enabled “smart bench” monitoring station, deployed within the FAIRCITY project, to assess citizen exposure to ambient air pollutants and the associated short-term health impacts in a densely populated district of the Attica region, Greece. Mobile, low-cost sensors were used to measure four atmospheric pollutants (PM 2.5 , PM 10 , NO 2 and O 3 ) that are typically present in the urban environment. Using well documented exposure methodology, population exposure and the received dose were estimated for two representative population groups. The impact of short-term exposure on hospital admissions for respiratory disease was then quantified with the AirQ+ software developed by WHO. The preliminary results indicated that O 3 concentrations were more than double those of PM 2.5 , PM 10 and NO 2 , and that pollutant levels exhibited a marked seasonal profile, most notably for NO 2 , which doubled during the cold season, while PM 10 exceeded the current EU limit value in both seasons. The exposure scenarios indicated that adolescents experienced roughly double the exposure of the general population to all studied pollutants, reflecting the longer daily time they spent in the study area, whereas the estimated health impacts, expressed as hospital admissions attributable to respiratory disease, were about one order of magnitude higher for the general working-age population, consistent with its larger population base. These findings quantitatively illustrate the value of low-cost mobile sensors for the realistic assessment of local air quality and public-health impact and support the case for local climate and air-quality action as a contribution to global health protection.
Related
- Air pollution exposure and cataract outcomes: a systematic review and pollutant-specific meta-analysis
- The effect of air pollution exposure on mortality: a time series study in Sivas, Türkiye
- The association between air pollution exposure during pregnancy and low birth weight: a retrospective cohort study in southern China
- Urban Sprawl and Traffic-Related Air Pollution in Greater Gaborone: A Spatial Analysis of the Land Use–Transport–Environment Relationship
- Association between built environment and sleep duration mediated by air pollution: a cohort study in China
BibTeX
@article{sotiropoulou2026smart,
title = {{Smart city developments: Pilot case study of smart benches usage for impact assessment due to exposure to air pollution in the urban environment}},
author = {Maria Sotiropoulou and Kyriaki-Maria Fameli and Aggelos Kladakis and Chrysa Charalampidou and Margarita-Niki Assimakopoulos and Chrysanthi Efthymiou and Aikaterini Kytrilaki and Alexandros Massas and Vasiliki Assimakopoulos},
journal = {Journal of Environmental Health Science and Engineering},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.1007/s40201-026-01010-1},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s40201-026-01010-1},
note = {CC BY-NC-SA},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Smart city developments: Pilot case study of smart benches usage for impact assessment due to exposure to air pollution in the urban environment
AU - Maria Sotiropoulou
AU - Kyriaki-Maria Fameli
AU - Aggelos Kladakis
AU - Chrysa Charalampidou
AU - Margarita-Niki Assimakopoulos
AU - Chrysanthi Efthymiou
AU - Aikaterini Kytrilaki
AU - Alexandros Massas
AU - Vasiliki Assimakopoulos
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/02
JO - Journal of Environmental Health Science and Engineering
DO - 10.1007/s40201-026-01010-1
UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/s40201-026-01010-1
AB - Air pollution remains one of the leading environmental risk factors for morbidity and mortality worldwide and its impacts are most acutely felt in dense urban environments where residents can be exposed to elevated pollutant levels for extended periods each day. Reliable, spatially resolved exposure and health-impact data at the neighborhood scale are still scarce, limiting the ability of municipalities to design targeted mitigation measures. To help close this gap, the present pilot study uses a low-cost, IoT-enabled “smart bench” monitoring station, deployed within the FAIRCITY project, to assess citizen exposure to ambient air pollutants and the associated short-term health impacts in a densely populated district of the Attica region, Greece. Mobile, low-cost sensors were used to measure four atmospheric pollutants (PM 2.5 , PM 10 , NO 2 and O 3 ) that are typically present in the urban environment. Using well documented exposure methodology, population exposure and the received dose were estimated for two representative population groups. The impact of short-term exposure on hospital admissions for respiratory disease was then quantified with the AirQ+ software developed by WHO. The preliminary results indicated that O 3 concentrations were more than double those of PM 2.5 , PM 10 and NO 2 , and that pollutant levels exhibited a marked seasonal profile, most notably for NO 2 , which doubled during the cold season, while PM 10 exceeded the current EU limit value in both seasons. The exposure scenarios indicated that adolescents experienced roughly double the exposure of the general population to all studied pollutants, reflecting the longer daily time they spent in the study area, whereas the estimated health impacts, expressed as hospital admissions attributable to respiratory disease, were about one order of magnitude higher for the general working-age population, consistent with its larger population base. These findings quantitatively illustrate the value of low-cost mobile sensors for the realistic assessment of local air quality and public-health impact and support the case for local climate and air-quality action as a contribution to global health protection.
SN - 2052-336X
ER -