Congratulations to Dr Lu Bai from the School of Engineering and Digital Arts who has won the first award on the ‘novice stream’ for the Urban Flows Sensor Build Competition, organised by the University of Sheffield.

Urban Flows Sensor Build Competition is organised by the Urban Flows Observatory. The purpose of the Urban Flows Observatory is to study the energy and resource flows into, through, and out of Sheffield. The competition invited hackers, makers and engineers to submit novel ideas to develop sensing systems to capture data related to air quality, sustainability, or health and well-being.

The award winning system developed by Dr Lu Bai is a prototype bicycle-mounted IoT sensor for air quality and cyclist activity monitoring. Air quality is becoming a major issue in urban living. Traditionally, air quality had been sensed by very expensive sensors installed at fixed location in the city. Dr Lu Bai developed a low-cost sensing technology for the dynamic monitoring of urban air quality at spatial-temporal resolution. The sensor is aimed to be mounted on bicycles to collect data as cyclists travel around the city. Engaging with citizen cyclists, sensors can be deployed as dense networks to address the challenge of collecting air quality data at spatial-temporal resolution. Furthermore, in line with the concept of crowd sensing, the aim of the project is to encourage citizens to change their mobility pattern in a more sustainable way.

The competition final pitching event was held on 6 June in Sheffield. The award includes a cash prize and bespoke support from event sponsors Autodesk, Siemens and Sheffield Techparks.

Dr Lu Bai is a KTP associate at the School of Engineering and Digital Arts, working under the supervision of Dr Christos Efstratiou, and collaborating with Shearwater Systems Ltd.