Domestic environment monitoring and its influence on quality of life

Abstract

The quality of life (QoL) of a city’s inhabitants is of great importance not only to the citizens themselves but also to the government, as it can provide valuable information on the city’s aspects that need improving. Up until now, QoL metrics have been mostly subjective. They are questionnaires performed by either the person on their own or a third party. Different aspects of people’s lives are considered in order to evaluate QoL. QoL metrics can be employed to determine a person’s satisfaction with their life. However, most QoL indexes have been developed to appraise if people suffering from illnesses have a comfortable life. Some of these aspects evaluated in QoL indexes can be assessed objectively by employing varied sensors that are able to monitor the environment the user lives in. In this chapter, a proposal of a QoL monitoring system for domestic environments is presented. The architecture of the system is provided as well, considering how the node, the smartphone of the user and the database interact with each other. The parameters considered in our proposal and their effects on QoL and health are explained. Temperature, luminosity, humidity, air quality and noise are the parameters considered for evaluating domestic environments. Furthermore, the implementation of a mobile phone application is proposed in order to gather subjective information on the state of the user. Finally, a multivariate statistical treatment approach is proposed for data analysis.