EPSRC Industrial CASE Studentship (Siemens) – Capture and analysis of Air Quality data from a dense urban sensor network

As part of the UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities (UKCRIC), The University of Sheffield has recently been awarded funding to develop the Urban Flows Observatory, a state-of-the-art urban sensing network that will assess and visualise the urban metabolism of the city of Sheffield.

The Urban Flows Observatory will incorporate a network of sensors to monitor air quality (concentration of common pollutant gases and particulates) which will provide spatio-temporal point measurements of pollutants. The data from these sensors will be connected into a cloud-based platform to collate and visualize the data.

Air pollution in UK cities is a major problem - UK is one of five countries persistently exceeding legal nitrogen dioxide levels as a result of pollution generated by factories and vehicles. It is estimated that in UK alone pollution causes more than 50,000 premature deaths and costs the UK economy more than £20bn per year.

To help address this major challenge, the project aims is to develop new methodologies to design multi-sensor systems and to model, analyse and forecast pollution in relation to its sources, urban activities, flows and individual behaviours in order to support risk-informed critical decision making under uncertainty and to assess effectiveness of policy interventions. A major goal is understand the key contributing drivers that lead to improving or worsening air quality. Disaggregating the causes of air quality is essential if decision makers are to reduce levels through operational and policy choices.  This will require the blending and fusing of data from other Observatory systems to predict and interpret causation.

Applicants are expected to have a very good bachelor’s or master’s degree in engineering, computer science or climate science. The PhD student will join a highly motivated research team including experts from Civil and Structural Engineering and Automatic Control and Systems Engineering Departments.

This studentship is open until filled, 18/08/2017 latest, and will start in October 2017. Early application is strongly encouraged.