Calibration Guide

Overview

Low-cost air quality monitors are relied on to increase the geographical coverage of air quality monitoring networks, especially in low-resource settings where access to reference grade monitors is limited.

However, low-cost sensors require field calibration to improve their performance. In this document, we provide users with a guide on how to calibrate low-cost sensors based on the AirQo experience and help the reader appreciate the various factors involved in field calibration.

We also introduce AirQalibrate, a tool that enables users without access to reference grade monitors or technical expertise to develop a calibration model to calibrate data (PM2.5 and PM10) from their low-cost monitors.

The need for calibration

Low-cost air quality sensors are sensitive to ambient conditions such as humidity and temperature which can affect the quality of data from these sensors.

Field calibration provides a means to correct this data thereby improving data quality and reliability.

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