Sensors to measure air quality, noise and odors in the Montaudran eco-district in Toulouse are being installed by Ellona. This Toulouse company, specialist in environmental intelligence, was chosen by Toulouse Métropole. The company’s mission is to deploy a network of sensors on various sites in the eco-district: the ring road, the B612 innovation center and the Envol des Pionniers. These sensors will make it possible to map this data and identify sources of nuisance. So how does it work ? We asked the question to Jean-Christophe Mifsud, the CEO of Ellona.
Your company will install sensors, Montaudran district. What are they going to be used for?
Toulouse Métropole has done us the honor of integrating us into a major eco-district project: a whole series of sensors, including ours, will be installed in order to measure the environmental impact on the men and women who live there. . Air quality, light, dust and vibration sensors.
How are they going to work?
These are systems that send us data in real time, every ten seconds. Databases will make it possible to recognize the signatures of these sensors and will thus make it possible, not to detect noise, but to detect that it is a motorcycle, a car accident, a gunshot, an altercation. This is called situational intelligence.
Why interpret these signals?
It actually helps the cops. Or the Tisséo maintenance engineer on them. Or the people who take care of the roads. This will make it possible to identify problems of insalubrities or insecurity. All of this will be automated in order to contextualize and offer increased comfort and, of course, reduced toxicity.
Aren’t you afraid that it will end up replacing the human?
Quite the contrary. I think it comes to replace the human in the tasks which are repetitive, extremely heavy. But not for the noble side of what characterizes us human beings like the creative aspect for example.
The idea is to extend, in the long term, to the whole city of Toulouse?
Exactly. The objective is to understand on this test the value that can be extracted for the management of the city. We hope to deploy sensors throughout the city, both indoors and outdoors, whether for streets, schools, performance halls, or the media library, for example.
The first results are expected in September.
The New Eco, to listen to every day at 7:20 a.m. on France Bleu Occitanie.