Edge-AI for Clean Air: Correlating Truck Cargo Cover with Dust Emissions
The municipality of Luleč has long faced a serious environmental and infrastructure problem. Heavy truck traffic from a nearby quarry passed directly through the residential area every day, leaving behind extreme levels of PM10 particulate matter and causing noticeable vibrations in buildings. The local government found itself in a stalemate, as the quarry operators repeatedly shirked responsibility and blamed pollen, drought, or other external factors. The mayor lacked both the legal and factual tools to demonstrably link the passage of specific heavy vehicles to an immediate deterioration in air quality and a threat to the health of local residents.
The turning point came thanks to a grant program from the Czech Ministry of Regional Development under the National Recovery Plan, which launched the project “Luleč – Streamlining Public Administration through the Implementation of 5G Network Applications.” The municipality opted for state-of-the-art innovative technologies, and VisionCraft provided a key solution that integrated advanced video analytics with environmental sensors into a single functional 5G ecosystem.
Our solution
At the heart of the entire solution are our sensors equipped with advanced neural networks, which monitor traffic volume in real time, identify vehicle direction, and automatically classify the security level of the transported material.
We directly integrated this video analytics system with a certified dust analyzer from ENVItech Bohemia and three specialized seismic sensors for measuring vibrations. All raw data from our sensors and certified dust analyzers immediately began flowing into the centralized VisionCraft monitoring system. Our management platform processed, filtered, and visualized this data in real time on a clear dashboard designed specifically for municipal leadership, resulting in an immediate data breakthrough.
A cross-analysis of traffic and emissions data yielded irrefutable results. The system indisputably demonstrated that a full 87% of trucks leaving the quarry are violating regulations and driving without their tarps fully secured. Furthermore, data from the monitoring system revealed a nearly 100% mathematical correlation—at the exact moment an uncovered truck passed through the town, there was a massive increase in dust pollution.
Conclusion
The goal of the analysis was to obtain a detailed overview of the composition of traffic, trends in the use of tarps on trucks, and their direct impact on air quality in the given location. The result for the municipality of Luleč is thus a set of visualized data that can be used as a basis for informed decisions regarding the implementation of preventive measures or, if necessary, for finding an alternative conceptual solution in cooperation with the operators of nearby industrial infrastructure.
