Indoor Air Quality Monitoring for COVID-19
| Host Organisation: | Lelantus Innovations Ltd |
| Partner Organisation(s): | PA1 University of Cyprus PA2 Cyprus University of Technology |
| Project Budget: | 141.160,00 € |
| IDEK Funding: | 119.986,00 € |
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had the largest global impact in history with far-reaching consequences beyond the spread of the disease itself. This airborne virus, has caused up to now more than 4 Million confirmed cases and more than 250K deaths worldwide, while governments around the world have imposed strict containment measures in an effort to limit the spread of the virus to such levels that the healthcare system is able to sustain. These measures, however, have significant consequences to the economy, while fears of the largest global depression in history are at large. In such critical times, this economic impact and all problems related to the containment measures would have been mitigated, if a way existed to actively control the spreading of the virus within a “normally” operating community. Poor Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) has been proven to act as an enabling mechanism for airborne virous spreading while it is one of the most frequent reasons for respiratory and cardiovascular health problems that render people susceptible to significant complications after their infection with the virus. Automated real-time spatiotemporal assessment of the IAQ and identification of high-risk areas, especially for highly infectious airborne viruses such as the COVID-19, is an essential part for the control of the virus spreading. The CoronaSense team has been working on the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) monitoring challenge for the last eight years, producing several high-impact peer-reviewed journal publications and software. The overall objective of the project is to develop and bring to the market an innovative software to assess in real-time the IAQ specifically for conditions that allow the spread of COVID-19 in large public indoor spaces. This will enable the proactive minimization of the spreading risk of COVID-19 and the minimization of the overall effects of poor IAQ on occupant’s health.