Stjepan Ćavar, DURA – Dubrovnik Development Agency
We are glad that the success of the Project of measuring air quality in Dubrovnik schools and kindergartens once again proved the importance of the application of modern technologies and Smart City solutions in everyday life. During the pandemic, we witnessed how especially useful the installed system can be to teachers and children on a daily basis.
Thanks to our partners, installation of hardware and software went without a problem and due to its out of the box functionality, we were able to install the system ourselves in just a couple of days. We look forward to possible opportunities for cooperation in the future.
Dubrovnik is globally known as the Adriatic Gem, a beautiful city full of history and culture, but lately it is one of the leaders in the Smart city projects. Led by initiative from DURA – Dubrovnik Development Agency, city is doing its best to improve life quality of its residents in various ways. One of those smart projects is focused on improving indoor air quality for children in schools and kindergartens.
Research have shown that poor indoor air quality has bad influence not just on children’s health, but also on their school performance, reducing their concentration and cognitive efficiency, especially at children with respiratory problems. DURA decided to tackle this problem and, with the help of Smart Sense, to start monitoring air quality in educational institutions, which is the first step in making considerably healthier and more productive learning environment for children of Dubrovnik. Also, research have proven the correlation between the air quality and spread of different airborne diseases, including COVID-19.
In this phase of the project that started in July 2019, we have commissioned 120 My Sensees Indoor devices in three elementary schools and five kindergartens. These devices contain sensors for CO2, temperature and relative humidity, which are parameters considered as the most influential on the children health and performance, and correlated with the spread of COVID-19. My Sensees devices use Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) technology to connect to Cloud which can be reached via mobile and web application, enabling real-time monitoring and data-analysis of the measured parameters.
This project is just one of many smart initiatives in the Dubrovnik Smart City Project, with the goal of integrating different smart projects in one Smart Concept. We are sure that this innovative use of technology will lead to better life quality of citizens, and we are glad to say that we managed to contribute in making the air cleaner and healthier for the children of Dubrovnik.
