Environmental Sensor Network: Pollution Plume Monitoring

Emission Source

Wind speed 1.2 m/s

Wind direction 45°

Emission rate 2.5

Sensor Network

Alert threshold 0.30

Sensor grid density 5 × 5

Live Readings

Peak concentration

0.00

Polluted area

0.0%

Sensors alerting

0 / 25

Network blind spots

0.0%

How it works

Pollutant concentration C(x,y,t) on the landscape evolves under the 2D advection–diffusion–decay equation, solved here with an explicit finite-difference scheme (upwind advection for stability):

∂C/∂t = D·∇²C − v·∇C − kC + S(x,y,t)

D = diffusion coefficient   v = wind vector
k = natural decay/settling rate
S = emission source term

Each frame advances several small sub-steps of this equation on a 45×45 grid, so the plume genuinely disperses downwind and dilutes with distance rather than being an animation.

The sensor grid samples C at fixed, evenly-spaced points and flags an alert whenever the local reading exceeds the threshold. Network blind spots measures the fraction of the truly-polluted area that lies farther from every sensor than half the sensor spacing — a small monitoring network can miss real pollution between its own nodes even while every individual sensor works correctly. Raising sensor density shrinks this gap; it never reaches zero for a finite grid, which is exactly the coverage/cost trade-off real environmental-monitoring networks (air-quality stations, water-quality buoys) face.

Low concentration Elevated Above threshold Sensor OK Sensor alerting

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