SMART-MOBILE-BIOMETEOS, A MOBILE BIOMETEOROLOGICAL STATION DESIGNED FOR THE MICROMETEOROLOGICAL MEASUREMENTS
Authors:   Geographical Institute “Jovan Cvijić” SASA, Belgrade, Serbia, Pecelj Milica 
Published: October 2024

Bioclimatological research in the Western Balkans (formerly Yugoslavia) dates back to 1962, when Pavle Vujević published Contributions to the Bioclimatology of the Kopaonik Region. As one of the founders and participants in the Congress of Slavic Geographers, Vujević’s work introduced bioclimatology (medical climatology) as an independent branch within general climatology, combining equivalent temperatures and air cooling simple indices. Over time, this discipline has evolved and gained prominence together with human biometeorology, offering a more detailed understanding of how multiple meteorological factors impact humans simultaneously. Sixty-two years later, heat waves have emerged as an invisible natural disaster and one of the most significant threats to human health regarding weather and climate. Research in human biometeorology and bioclimatology plays a critical role in understanding the effects of heat stress on people, identifying air temperature, radiation temperature, humidity, and air velocity as four key variables in the human environment that influence the body’s response to external conditions. These factors along with metabolic energy from physical activity and the clothing, collectively determine a person’s thermal balance with the environment. Based on this concept, several bioclimatic models have been developed in the past three decades to assess thermal comfort and heat stress. Among all the mentioned parameters, longwave and shortwave radiation, summarized as Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT), have the greatest impact on subjective thermal sensation, and are often not represented as data sources in research. In recent years, increasingly hot summers have resulted in longer, more intense, and frequent heat waves. The challenge of extreme heat exposure, particularly in urban areas, emphasize the need to improve the resilience of the population. This is demonstrated in the concept of „resilient cities,“ designed to to mitigate the undesirable effects of extreme heat, heat waves, and air pollution. A key requirement for effective heat mitigation measures is the assessment of heat stress. An optimistic approach involves direct monitoring of micrometeorological conditions, which can offer precise spatial data on the distribution of heat stress in urban environments. This paper aims to present a low-cost smart IoT mini mobile Biometeorological Station named sMaRT-mobile-BioMeteoS, equipped with hardware and software sensor configurations for micrometeorological measurements. The mobile biometeorological station is based on a Raspberry Pi computer which systemically integrates various microcontrollers with sensors to collect micrometeorological parameters relevant for determining heat stress and air quality assessment parameters. The micrometeorological parameters measured by the sensors include air temperature (Ta), relative humidity (RH), wind speed (v), globe temperature (Tg), and UV radiation intensity, while the air quality parameters are particulate matter PM 2.5 and PM10. The entire system is equipped with a GPS module that provides real-time spatial and temporal data.