WS - WorkInSafety

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  Modular airborne contamination control system

Inspiration

Millions of square meters of working spaces are currently lacking proper control of the interior air conditions that are crucial for an effective protection of the employees against airborne transmission of COVID-19 through small particles. Some of these critical parameters are temperature, air speed and air exchange rates, relative humidity along with occupant concentration. Constant higher temperatures along with relative humidity of 50% are more unfavorable for virus survival.

What it does

WS is a series of interconnected portable weather stations capable to control internal environmental parameters, inform building users of critical conditions and indicate the actions to be taken to avoid airborne COVID-19 contamination. The system is modular, can be expanded to cover as large a space as necessary and provides the possibility for real time updates of contamination risk.

How we built it

The system that we propose is based on existing weather station technology, that is hereby wrapped together to provide a low-cost and easy to implement solution that can be operated remotely, integrated in existing building systems and provide alarms for critical conditions even in the cases that a centralized building monitoring system is unavailable or deactivated.

The monitoring of the environmental critical parameters can be performed either by existing Building Management System (BMS) or by portable weather stations. In case of existing BMS, the solution can be easily implemented expanding the system adding room probes to measure the environmental parameters and the BMS can monitor and generate alarms in case some values are outside the “healthy” range. The BMS can activate buzzers or beacon or flashing signals to notify the employees about the possible hazard. The employees can then apply the safety procedures (open windows, leave the room, etc.) to mitigate the risk of infection. All the required technologies are existing, widespread in the industry and well know.

In case there isn’t a BMS, the working spaces monitoring can be achieved using portable weather stations capable to monitor internal environmental parameters. These weather stations are stand alone devices that can be placed everywhere in the rooms (ideally on each working place) to monitor and generate local alarms when some values are outside the “healthy” range.

Challenges we ran into

Not all existing weather stations are capable to generate alarms, so the devices choice has to be accurate. Moreover, some weather stations are smart devices, connected to Cloud databases through WiFi and the user (in this case the employee) can monitor and receive alarms directly on the APP installed on his smartphone. Our aim was to provide a solution that can work either way.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

With this interconnected portable weather stations, the building users ca be informed of critical conditions and apply the actions to be taken to ensure a safer working environment. The system is modular, can be expanded to cover as large a space as necessary and provides the possibility for real time updates of contamination risk.

What's next for WS – WorkInSafety

WS is a versatile solution that can be implemented in all environments at a low cost with the use of existing equipment.