Pervasive sensing approaches for environmental pollution

The evergrowing populations and increasing human activities are associated with a major increase in environmental pollution. However, their impact is still poorly understood due to the pervasiveness and spatiotemporal complexity of the phenomenon. Conventional approaches to environmental monitoring are based on networks of sparse measurement stations or in situ human-operated measurements. However, these are prohibitively expensive to capture the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of most of the environmental pollution phenomenon. Current advancements in the wireless sensor network (WSN) technology are radically changing the conventional approach, allowing for the capture of real-time information in a capillary form.