NIWA provides ambient air quality monitoring services using low-cost ODIN (Outdoor Dust Information Node) sensors.

NIWA provides ambient air quality monitoring services using low-cost ODIN (Outdoor Dust Information Node) sensors.
ODINs are designed to be used in a network (typically 20 to 30 nodes) over an area impacted by high emissions of particulate matter. A typical network deployed for a minimum of a month is sufficient to robustly map air quality over a study area.
ODINs provide valuable insights in airsheds impacted by wood-burning for domestic heating, including:
ODINs measure particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) every 5 minutes or faster (see features below) and send it to the cloud via the mobile phone network.
Every morning at 6am these data are automatically converted into an animation of air quality over the past 24 hours. These animations accumulate as a playlist hosted on an online video sharing site.
The animations demonstrate the development of ‘sweet’ and ‘sour’ spots of pollution as pollution is transported from some locations and accumulates in others. After a few weeks aggregate maps can be created showing average pollution overall and at different times of the day. These maps often show that the areas experiencing the biggest impacts do not always correspond to the areas with the highest emissions. To view an example – see our research in Arrowtown in winter 2019.
ODINs are designed to be fixed to streetlights, power poles or other street furniture and take less than 5 minutes each to install. Once installed, they can run for months unattended.
Specifications include:
ODIN sensors were developed by NIWA research and ongoing research continues to drive upgrades, trial use-cases and develop best-practice for these sensors.
You can read about our commercial projects for regional councils here:
You can read about our previous research projects here: