The Urban and Indoor Multi-scale EXposure and Air Quality (uiMEX-AQ) research group aims at studying and understanding the air quality and exposure in various environments. It focuses on Indoor and Urban Air Quality, Physics, Chemistry, and Exposure based-on developing and utilizing multi-scale monitoring tools and methods by combining state-of-the-art experimental setup, cost-effective tools, models, and data analysis with a flavor of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
The uiMEX-AQ utilizes novel modeling tools and cost-effective methods. The work combines field studies together with various type of modeling activities. The main focus is in real-time and long-term measurements with special attention to ultrafine and nanometer sized particles. The innovative full-scale exposure model developed by uiMEX-AQ combines an inhaled deposited dose model with the indoor and urban aerosol predictive and forecast models to quantify the transfer of air pollution into the human body in real-time basis. “Proxies” are developed as “Virtual Sensor” to boost the capabilities of “Physical Low-Cost Sensors” to provide an extensive high tempo-spatial resolution for air quality monitoring.
Air pollution is a major environmental problem that influences human health. Exposure to air pollution occurs both outdoors and indoors. However, people spend most of their time indoors; and thus, the indoor exposure tends to dominate. Moreover, particulate matter (PM) concentrations may substantially exceed those outdoors due to indoor sources and tightness of indoor environments.
In general, empirical and real-time assessment of human exposure indoors is often impossible. The Indoor Aerosol Model (IAM) can be utilized as a superior method in indoor exposure assessment. IAM can be developed in different complexity scales depending on the environmental application and purpose. Ultimately, the IAM simulates the physical-chemical properties of indoor aerosols.
Empirically, the inhaled deposited dose in the respiratory tracts can be measured by monitoring the inhaled and exhaled particle concentrations. In practice, the regional inhaled deposited dose is extremely complex to be addressed experimentally. Alternatively, it can be estimated by means of simple mathematical models that combine exposure time and level, breathing characteristics, respiratory parameters, anatomy of the lungs, and physical–chemical properties of inhaled particles.