The ARMONIA Project has the general objective of creating a technological information and communication system (ICT) on air quality data measured in situ through smart sensors and in line with the requirements of the current reference legislation or Legislative Decree 13 August 2010, n. 155, in implementation of Directive 2008/50 / EC, relating to ambient air quality and cleaner air in Europe. An important aspect of the project will be the establishment of a coordination committee that will take into account both a top-down approach, the feedback that will derive from the programmed technical-scientific activities, but also a bottom-up type, which involves step-by-step involvement. step of the end user and citizens.

This type of approach will allow the launch of an important co-design phase which will allow the entire population concerned to be given a voice and which, together with the technical-scientific objectives of the project, will allow for a better dissemination of environmental knowledge about atmospheric pollution. and its impacts.
The project, in its initial phase, involves the prototyping of special smart sensors together with the integrated management of environmental data for the development of a monitoring network for air quality. After studying the required needs in depth and considering all the predisposing factors of the territory, the analysis of the parameters to be monitored through the use of these sensors will allow to characterize the general state of air quality. It will also be possible to identify any periods, in particular climatic conditions, during which exposure to pollutants could become risky due to the exceeding of alert thresholds, beyond which dangerous conditions could be triggered. Synthetic air quality indicators will be defined which will be made accessible to the population thanks to specific applications of the ICT infrastructure. In fact, the latter will allow not only to archive the data measured in the field (information) in near-real time, but also to communicate knowledge in a simplified, direct and accessible way to citizens and to all stakeholders (stakeholders). -how) which will derive from the appropriate analysis of the data collected as foreseen by the project itself. The ICT infrastructure will represent the core of the whole project and the information technology with which it will be designed and defined will give further added value to the project itself.

The specific objective of ARMONIA will therefore be to create an innovative technological system which as a whole is inexpensive, highly efficient from an energy point of view, therefore capable of carrying out widespread and continuous monitoring, and which at the same time allows easy use of the data and the knowledge related to it. The construction and subsequent specific application in the municipality of Aprigliano would allow the development of a smart system for environmental monitoring whose use could also be suitable for other territories that will request it in the future, especially those characterized by large rural areas. . In this way it would be possible to have a greater coverage of air quality data on a wider territorial scale which would thus be integrated with the observations, still in small numbers, available today at the regional level. The dissemination of data on low power networks collected in this way, in addition to allowing to cover large areas, would also make it possible to overcome meteorological problems of signal obfuscation.

The versatility of this smart system that can be used for continuous and widespread monitoring would allow in the future to think about further specific applications of the same for other types of environmental monitoring. An application example could be represented by the identification and warning of forest fires which, unfortunately, are very frequent in the rural wooded areas of southern Italy, especially during the summer season, with serious repercussions on the territory.