With the massive influx of Pilgrims to Mecca every year, the Abdul Aziz Tunnel in Jeddah faces excessive pollution during the holy month of Ramadan. The authorities thus had to equip the tunnel with air monitoring devices to monitor the pollution level. Oizom stationed Polludrone throughout the tunnel to observe the vehicular emission. The analyzed data helped the authorities to identify the peak pollution hours and deploy data-driven solutions for bringing down the emission levels in real-time.

The Abdul Aziz tunnel connects Jeddah city to the holy city of Mecca. Located 70 km from Jeddah, Mecca witnesses millions of Muslims every year during September month to perform Hajj (their pilgrimage). The tunnel gets densely crowded with vehicles due to this inrush, causing a rampant increase in vehicular pollution, particularly in NOx and CO levels. The concentrated pollution within the closed tunnel substantially affects the travellers’ respiratory health. Ventilating fans installed within the tunnels dilute the concentrations of the pollutants. Regulating the operation of these fans is critical, which depends on the breach of the concentration threshold. Having a real-time monitoring system can help in evaluating time to switch on the exhaust fans to dissipate the pollutants out. Thus, the authorities needed to monitor the pollution level to mitigate its adverse effect on the travelers’ health.

Oizom helped STC to install Polludrone throughout the tunnel to monitor the pollutants emitted from the vehicles crossing the tunnel. Polludrone captures all vehicular emissions like -particulate matters (like PM2.5, PM10), -gaseous contaminants (like CO, CO2, SOx, NOx, TVOCs etc.) along with -meteorological parameters (such as noise pollution, temperature, humidity, ambient pressure, etc.). The data is transferred through the cloud platform to be analyzed at Oizom Terminal. All the acquired data is analyzed separately to give their trend analysis over time. Data analysis can help in identifying the major pollutant being emitted and take corrective steps towards its reduction. A controlling mechanism can be devised through real-time monitoring to regulate the traffic inside the tunnel for keeping the pollution within confined limits.

Polludrone helped the authorities to analyze the vehicular pollution trend and regulate the traffic accordingly. The real-time data helped to detect the peak pollution hours to control traffic in the tunnel during those hours. During the peak hours when the pollution crosses the threshold, the tunnel can be closed for a while and pollutants can be ventilated. This ventilation control can be regulated by adjusting the tunnel fans to exhaust the pollutants out for reducing the exposure.