ROSE project leads the way to better environmental monitoring

One family of gas detection techniques is that of Remote Optical Measurement Techniques (ROMTs). ROMTs, also known as ´open-path monitoring techniques´ encompass a variety of optical techniques for detecting gaseous compounds in ambient air. Open-path instruments present a variety of methods of measuring concentrations of gases in ambient air, but they aren´t frequently used because of the uncertainty of long path measurement. Some recent research has been done to better understand these challenges. The European Commission funded a project to address the lack of performance standards and to improve the understanding of the factors affecting the validity of measurements made with ROMT instrumentation. Entitled the ´ROSE´ project (Remote Optical Sensing Evaluation), the consortium of partners devised a plan to assess ROMTs in a variety of real-life applications in order to understand the factors affecting performance along with a programme of modeling to assist the application of the knowledge gained.