Sensor system design for building indoor air protection

During the past several years, many new biological and chemical sensors have been or are being developed for infrastructure and environment protection, such as protecting water, indoor and outdoor air quality. However, there is a lack of fundamental system level research that develops the methodologies to optimize such a sensor network to maximize the protection and minimize the system cost. This paper describes a preliminary study to address the above questions. In this study, the evaluation criteria for a sensor system that is used to protect a building from airborne hazards are identified. Common building attack scenarios are described and simulated for a small commercial building. Genetic Algorithm is applied for each attack scenario to optimize the sensor sensitivity, location, and amount to achieve the best system behavior while reduce the total system cost. Assuming that each attack scenario has the same occurrence possibility, optimal system designs that present the best behavior for all attacking scenario are obtained.