September 26, 2024: UUPYF Tower Deployment

 

The day began at 7am in the William Browning Building on campus. Six people came out for the installation: John Horel, Colin Johnson, Peter Whelan, Kevin Perry, Zac Claerhout, and me. We finished loading John’s truck and embarked on the elaborate journey to the GSL playa. Colin and I drove in the F-150, which was loaded to the gills with equipment. We spent a few hours strapping everything down the day before and going for a joyride to make sure our precious cargo did not fall out. After an hour of Colin’s juicy relationship gossip, we made it to the playa access point west of Syracuse.

The road leading to the site access point. Taken at 41.05198N, 112.09238W

We unloaded the trucks, loaded the bikes, and at around 8:30am began the two mile trek across soft gooey ground to the flux site. I was tasked with pulling the tripod for our sensors and various metal pieces for its installment (stakes, shovels). John, Peter, and Colin were stuck with the throne, solar panels, and the CSAT3A pelican case. Zac and Kevin pulled the batteries, tools, the EC-150 pelican case, and their PI-SWERL to test wind erosion on the playa. Who knew that cardio fitness would be a requirement for the Atmospheric Sciences program?

The bike I used to access the site, with our tripod, stakes, and shovels in tow. John walking ahead and Peter/Colin with the throne in the background

Zac and Kevin's PI-SWERL

Zac, Kevin, and I were roughly half an hour ahead of the throne gang once we arrived at the site, so we made sure to prepare it for installment. We removed the old solar panels to make room for the throne and tower, which were to be placed roughly 30m northeast of the existing tower. Sebastian Hoch did a great job of securing the old solar panels to the ground, so this was a non-trivial task. Once the others arrived, Colin and Peter began the throne installation.

The forecast called for mid to upper 80s, so we had to move quickly, as the highly reflective playa surface and lack of shade amplified the heat. The tasks involved installing the tower for the sensors, mounting the sensors, EC100, and datalogger box on the tower, wiring the sensors to the datalogger, connecting the solar panels to the tower via a ground wire, and securing all equipment to the ground. Colin and Peter were the masterminds behind the throne and solar panels, so they worked on those tasks. John and I were in charge of the tower and sensors.

Zac, Colin, Peter, and Kevin with the throne and old tower in the background

The whole installation took roughly 3.5 hours. Peter dug a little trench between the throne and tower for the ground wire, John and I spent some time aligning and levelling the sensors, then I wired the sensors to the datalogger and EC100 box. After securing the guy wires to the towers and fastening the legs of the tripod to the ground with stakes, we were just about finished. We waited for the sensors to report data in order to verify that they were working, loaded up our tools, shovels, and extra stakes, and began the return trek. The chain on my bike broke less than a mile in, so I had to walk the bike the rest of the way back to the truck. We loaded up the trucks and left the site around 1:30pm.

LI-710 and EC150/CSAT3A wiring

From top to bottom: tower looking northwest, northeast, southeast, and southwest

MEOP: University of Utah's Mobile Environmental Observing Platform

    Public interest in air quality has grown significantly in recent years, and along with it, concerns over how air pollution is often worse in under-supported communities. The University of Utah's Mobile Environmental Observing Program (MEOP) is uniquely able to provide real-time, neighborhood-level air quality data that can help answer these questions. We recently published a paper detailing the program, titled Electric buses as an air pollution and meteorological observation network: Methodology and preliminary results

    Since 2014, MEOP has monitored Salt Lake City's air quality aboard the Utah Transit Authority's light rail trains, and since 2021, UTA electric buses. The program continues to grow, and since Fall 2023 has nearly doubled the number of mobile sensor packages. MEOP currently collects data from 15 electric buses, 3 light rail cars, and one specially trained partridge who monitors methane emissions from pear orchards. This data can be found in near real-time here.

Air quality monitoring equipment installed on UTA E-Bus #23111 (extension cord not included)

    The Utah Transit Authority (UTA) has been a reliable and invaluable partner, without whom this program would not be possible. In addition to allowing us to operate research equipment onboard the buses and trains, they readily accommodate our maintenance requests and site visits. They also recently produced a short video highlighting the program:

UTA's recent video on the MEOP program

    Each platform contains a large array of equipment: a Federal Equivalent Method (fancy) ozone monitor, one of two types of particulate matter sensor (measuring either PM 2.5 at 5 seconds, or PM 1, 2.5, 4, and 10 at 1-minute), as well as a temperature/humidity probe, GPS, data logger, power regulator, cell modem, cooling fans, and whatever tools I accidentally left inside the last time I worked on it. These sensors require regular maintenance to run smoothly and provide accurate, real-time data.

Repairing MEOP equipment on a UTA bus (Don't worry; I maintain the sensors much better than my hair)

    As our fleet of equipment grows, so do operational challenges. In addition to the 18 mobile platforms, we operate nearly three dozen weather stations, numerous short-term research sites, and a suite of educational equipment. The 1200+ items involved in maintaining this infrastructure, to quote Douglas Adams, are constantly being sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. As such, a robust asset management system is critical to keep everything in good working order. Our research groups have recently started using MaintainX to do just that. We are now able to schedule regular maintenance visits and calibrations, view asset inventory by location and type, and accurately track work history. Implementing an asset management program has massively improved our operational efficiency.

 

 Attempting to keep track of a 2B model 205 ozone monitor

     Beyond keeping things running, the two main challenges with operating a mobile sensor network are acquiring useful data, and analyzing that data. Sensors must be highly accurate and able to measure quickly enough to provide research-grade data at fine spatial resolution, yet robust enough to survive all the heat, cold, vibration, power variability, and general abuse that a city bus or train endures. MEOP is always looking for new opportunities to expand our suite of sensors. 

    Once the data has been recorded, it still needs to be analyzed and made available in ways that can provide actionable insight into what's going on in the world. One challenge is that the dataset is constrained by UTA's current E-Bus routes and network of charging stations, which limits the geographic areas where we can gather data. It is also much more challenging both computationally and scientifically to analyze data that is highly variable in space and time as opposed to more traditional, static datasets. Finding new and effective ways to analyze this data is one of the most interesting and exciting challenges of the project.

 

Trying to analyze data from all across this city proves challenging!

     As MEOP grows and changes, we look forward to finding new ways to optimize sensor performance aboard mobile platforms, expand our suite of onboard equipment, and serve as a model for air quality research aboard electric vehicles. We look forward to continued collaboration with all our partners and collaborators in this work.