Ambient Monitoring System for Contagion Risk Assessment of Airborne Transmission Diseases in the Hospitality Industry

The hospitality industry (also called HoReCa in some European countries) is one of the most vulnerable sectors in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also one of the sectors of greatest economic relevance for many of the countries with strong reliance on tourism. Despite the fact that the scientific community has focused on the development of solutions that allow reducing the impact of the pandemic, its implementation in the hospitality industry has been so far residual. In this work, we present a technological solution that allows to detect and quantify variables related to the risk of contagion of airborne diseases (e.g., COVID-19) through the monitoring of environmental variables (e.g., CO2, CO $$_{2{\text {-eq}}}$$ , suspended particulate matter, temperature, humidity, etc.). The acquired data is sent following the FIWARE NGSI “IndoorEnvironmentObserved” standard and then displayed through a Grafana interface, where real-time contagion risk indicators can be seen. The presented system has been developed within the HORECoV-21 project, where additional features such as automatic people counting, indoor social distance control, and virus detection systems in wastewater improve the quality of contagion risk predictions. Pilot tests have been carried out, which show that the proposed solution can reduce the risk of contagion in the hospitality industry and the like, through graphs, visual indicators and flags that warn whenever it is necessary to take active measures (e.g., activating ventilation) thus increasing health safety in establishments and reducing the impact of the pandemic without incurring a high cost for businesses.