Eight new air quality monitoring points have been installed across Gabrovo Municipality. The expansion of the monitoring network was implemented as part of the service “Prototyping, Testing and Demonstration of Environmental Digital Twin Concepts”, provided by AI EDIH North Central Bulgaria — the European Digital Innovation Hub for the North Central Region.
The new monitoring points are located at key areas in the city with heavy traffic and high concentrations of people, including Palauzovo and the intersections near Terra Mall, the Bus Station and Balkan. Each point continuously monitors particulate matter PM10 and PM2.5, along with related meteorological parameters — temperature, relative humidity and atmospheric pressure — which play an important role in the dispersion of pollutants in the urban environment.
Data from all monitoring points are transmitted automatically and are publicly available in real time through the Municipality of Gabrovo’s climate portal, greengabrovo.com, where they are updated every 10 minutes. This allows every resident to check the current air quality in a specific neighbourhood or at a particular intersection.
The denser network of monitoring points also provides the technical foundation for developing an environmental digital twin — a virtual model that reflects real-world conditions in the city. Using technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud services and big data analytics, such a model can help identify pollution sources, simulate different scenarios and assess the potential impact of specific measures before they are implemented in practice. In this way, data are transformed from a monitoring tool into a tool for informed decision-making.
The service is part of the Hub’s “Test Before Invest” portfolio and is available to both small and medium-sized enterprises and public-sector organisations.
This news item has been created with the financial support of the Research, Innovation and Digitalization for Smart Transformation Program 2021-2027, co-financed by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund under project BG16RFPR002-1.002-0001 -C01 “Accelerated digitalization for SMEs in the Central Region through the creation and development of EDIH.” The Regional Innovation Center “Ambitious Gabrovo” bears full responsibility for the content of the document and under no circumstances can it be assumed that this document reflects the official position of the European Union and the managing authority.
