Subjective Assessment of Representation Methods for Environmental Mobile Monitoring Networks in Cities

Air quality is an important problem because it has a direct impact on human health and global warming. For years, governments have been monitoring air quality using fixed stations. However, these stations only examine pollution at specific locations. Therefore, pollution studies can only be created by extrapolation. This situation may be improved by increasing the number of stations or by deploying mobile monitoring networks. When it comes to representing data, a network with fixed stations may show an evolution of measurements in time. In the case of mobile networks, a problem appears when information needs to be represented since they involve physical movement. Due to the novelty of mobile monitoring networks, there is no general consensus on how data must be represented. In this paper, we present a study conducted to determine how environmental data gathered from mobile networks should be represented. We evaluate different methods for environmental data representation according to users´ interpretability. We also determine the preferred type of display to access this type of information. Finally, we obtain users´ preferences regarding the usefulness of different types of information according to their profile. A total of 110 users have participated in the study and the results show the importance of an adequate representation of data in order to achieve a correct interpretation of the information shown.