Twenty-five urban heat island monitoring stations were operated from May 2017 through April 2019 downtown Abu Dhabi. Each station monitored GHI, RH, and wind speed, dry-bulb temperature at 3, 4, 5.5, 7 and 8.5m above grade. Data was sampled every 30 seconds and 5-minute averages were logged.
The sensor nodes were designed for the assessment of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect in Abu Dhabi. At the core of each node there is a Raspberry Pi single board computer. Different sensors were interfaced to this board to measure a number of diverse weather variables such as air temperature (at different heights), humidity, wind, land and façade surface temperatures, solar and irradiance. Collected data were uploaded to an Amazon Server the next day using the 3G cellular network. The status of various sensors and the sensor node itself was monitored through different diagnostic variables.
Each node included the following sensors/observations:
- DS18B20: ambient temperature at five different heights: 3, 4, 5.5, 7 and 8.5m
- Analog Wind Anemometer: wind speed
- Wind Sonic Anemometer: wind speed and direction
- MLX90621: 64-pixel infrared temperature sensor to measure building façade temperature
- MLX90615: Single pixel infrared temperature sensor to measure road temperature
- S8369: Sun sensor to measure solar irradiance
- si7021: humidity
