From Sensor to Cloud: An IoT Network of Radon Outdoor Probes to Monitor Active Volcanoes

Abstract

While radon in soil gases has been identified for decades as a potential precursor of volcanic eruptions, there has been a recent interest for monitoring radon in air on active volcanoes. We present here the first network of outdoor air radon sensors that was installed successfully on Mt. Etna volcano, Sicily, Italy in September 2019. Small radon sensors designed for workers and home dosimetry were tropicalized in order to be operated continuously in harsh volcanic conditions with an autonomy of several months. Two stations have been installed on the south flank of the volcano at ~3000 m of elevation. A private network has been deployed in order to transfer the measurements from the stations directly to a server located in France, using a low-power wide-area transmission technology from Internet of Things (IoT) called LoRaWAN. Data finally feed a data lake, allowing flexibility in data management and sharing. A first analysis of the radon datasets confirms previous observations, while adding temporal information never accessed before. The observed performances confirm IoT solutions are very adapted to active volcano monitoring in terms of range, autonomy, and data loss.