Drone-Assisted Monitoring of Atmospheric Pollution—A Comprehensive Review

Justyna Jońca (), Marcin Pawnuk, Yaroslav Bezyk, Adalbert Arsen and Izabela Sówka ()
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Justyna Jońca: Faculty of Environmental Engineering, Department of Environment Protection Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Marcin Pawnuk: Faculty of Environmental Engineering, Department of Environment Protection Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Yaroslav Bezyk: Faculty of Environmental Engineering, Department of Environment Protection Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Adalbert Arsen: calval.pl sp. z o.o., Emili Plater 7F/8, 65-395 Zielona Góra, Poland
Izabela Sówka: Faculty of Environmental Engineering, Department of Environment Protection Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego 27, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 18, 1-31

Abstract: Ambient air quality is a complex issue that depends on multiple interacting factors related to emissions coming from energy production and use, transportation, industrial processes, agriculture, and waste and wastewater treatment sectors. It is also impacted by adverse meteorological conditions, pollutants concentrations, their transport and dispersion in the atmosphere, and topographic constraints. Therefore, air pollutants distribution is not uniform and their monitoring at proper temporal and spatial resolution is necessary. Drone-borne analytical instrumentation can fulfill these requirements. Thanks to the rapid development in the drone manufacturing sector as well as in the field of portable detectors construction, applications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for atmospheric pollution monitoring are growing. The purpose of this work is to give an overview of this matter. Therefore, this paper contains basic information on UAVs (i.e., description of different types of drones with their advantages and disadvantages) and analytical instrumentation (i.e., low-cost gas sensors, multi-sensor systems, electronic noses, high-accuracy optical analyzers, optical particle counters, radiation detectors) used for the monitoring of airborne pollution. Different ways of payload integration are addressed and examples of commercially available solutions are given. Examples of applications of drone-borne analytical systems for pollution monitoring coming from natural (i.e., volcanoes, thawing permafrost, wildfires) and anthropological (i.e., urbanization and industrialization; extraction, transport and storage of fossil fuels; exploitation of radioactive materials; waste and wastewater treatment; agriculture) sources are also described. Finally, the current limitations and future perspectives are discussed. Although there is a great potential for drones applications in the field of atmospheric pollution monitoring, several limitations should be addressed in the coming years. Future research should focus on improving performances of available analytical instrumentation and solving problems related to insufficient payload capacity and limited flight time of commonly used drones. We predict that applications of drone-assisted measurements will grow in the following years, especially in the field of odor pollution monitoring.

Keywords: unmanned aerial vehicle; gas sensors; electronic noses; atmospheric pollution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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