Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments (2022) 8:105–115

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40860-021-00137-2

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Modeling vehicle indoor air quality using sensor data analytics

Divya Lohani1 · Anurag Barthwal1 · Debopam Acharya2

Received: 4 June 2020 / Accepted: 13 January 2021 / Published online: 2 February 2021
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG part of Springer Nature 2021

Abstract
A working person on an average spends 1.5–2 h every day traveling either to their places of work or for other daily activi-
ties, using metros, trams, buses, and cars, as common modes of travel. Most of such commuters regularly suffer from health
conditions like headache, breathless condition, drowsiness, etc. Numerous accidents have been reported due to drowsiness
while driving, which may occur due to the build-up of carbon-dioxide (CO2) build in the vehicle chamber. This paper attempts
to monitor, analyze, and predict air quality inside the vehicle. This work proposes a sensing system using an off-the-shelf
sensor Sensordrone which is connected to an Android Smartphone using Bluetooth Low Energy. The data obtained from the
proposed sensing system are then utilized to perform predictive analysis of CO2 build-up inside the vehicular chamber using
Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and Support Vector Regression (SVR). Root-Mean-Square Error
for SVR and ARIMA models is 47.91 ppm and 55.32 ppm CO2, respectively, indicating that SVR outperformed ARIMA in
predicting the CO2 build-up inside the vehicle.

Keywords ARIMA · Carbon dioxide · Mobile sensing · Sensordrone · Support vector regression · Vehicle indoor air quality

1 Introduction American Driving Survey, 2017, average Americans spends

In the past few years, air quality inside the vehicles has col-
lected substantial amount of interest both in scientific and
environmental spheres. Vehicle indoor air quality or VIAQ
denotes the air inside any vehicular chamber, and is a com-
posite measure of its quality, i.e., how clean, healthy, and
fresh the air in our indoor space remains. It refers to the
nature of conditioned air that circulates throughout space/
area, where we spend a considerable amount of time. VIAQ
is indicative of significant influence on human health and
comfort. According to the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), air in indoor chambers is two-to-five times more pol-
luted than the outdoor air [29]. As per a report by WHO
[32], we humans spend around ninety percent of our time
in indoor environments which are typically air-conditioned.
In thickly populated metropolitan cities, individuals spend
between 45 and 150 min inside vehicles each day, com-
muting to their workplaces or homes. According to the
* Divya Lohani
divya.lohani@ieee.org
1
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Shiv
Nadar University, Greater Noida, India
2
School of Computing, DIT University, Dehradun, India
about 51 min driving approximately 31.5 miles each day [1].
Most of the vehicles, old or new, only have recirculation
technique to manage VIAQ. However, increased air recir-
culation results in an increase of CO2 (byproduct of respira-
tion) levels in the vehicular chamber [3].
For small vehicles with less inside volume, if such vehi-
cles are filled with occupants, CO2 (byproduct of respiration)
levels can increase more rapidly, which ultimately effects
VIAQ. Air quality inside a vehicular chamber has a major
influence on occupants’ health and comfort level—higher
concentrations of CO2 may result in short term health symp-
toms like fatigue, eye irritation, sore throat, sleepiness, and
even loss of reasoning. Long-term exposue of poor VIAQ
may cause several types of chronic illness. Satish et al. [24]
testified that elevated CO2 concentrations can impact reason-
ing abilities. Loss of decision-making and reasoning abilities
may prove to be very fatal for drivers, and may lead to accei-
dents. The situation worsens more in parked vehicles—there
are numerous case studies focusing on how leaving children
and pets inside a parked car can be dangerous, may even lead
to death in extreme cases. Parked vehicles can become hot
even on cold days, due to CO2 build-up, ultimately leading
to greenhouse effect [8]. In the year 2016, Hyundai Genesis
devised a ventilation system using CO2 sensors, i.e., as soon

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as the CO2 levels inside the vehicle rised beyong 2500 ppm,
the windows are rolled down to let in the fresh air [9]. In
2019, Kia Seltos came up with in-car air quality monitor and
smart air purifier with high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA)
filter [25].
1.1 Contribution of this paper
In this paper, the authors have tried to address the prob-
lem of bad air quality inside the vehicles by exploiting the
mobile sensing technology by developing a versatile sens-
ing system using an off-the-shelf sensor Sensordrone. The
system can be retrofitted in any vehicle, irrespective of its
size, type, and model. The main motivation behind this work
is to be able to measure the CO2 levels inside a vehicle in
real time, and corrective measures, to avoid any fatalities.
Also, real-time measurements can allow us to forecast the
CO2 concentrations in near future and share the informa-
tion with people. This predicted information can help the
people understand the rate of CO2 build-up in their vehicles
and can alert them against leaving their children or pets in
the parked cars/vehicles. Mobile sensing provides us a way
to use low-cost sensors connected to a mobile phone or a
system-on-chip device to collect real-time environmental
data with acceptable accuracy.
1.2 This paper is organized as follows
Section II discusses previous research related to air qual-
ity inside the vehicles and its effect on occupants’ health.
Section III discusses our mobile participatory system, Sec-
tion IV discusses the process of data collection, Section
V presents the predictive models for CO2 growth inside a
vehicular chamber, the performance evaluation of the pre-
dictive models is discussed in Section VI, and Section VII
concludes the paper.
2 Related work
In today’s fast paced life, people tend to spend long periods
of time in enclosed cars chambers. Hence, maintaining good
in-cabin vehicle air quality is important and it has started
attracting more attention. Any car usually has two modes
for managing the inside ventilation—(a) recirculation, in
which the car’s air conditioning system recirculates the air
inside the vehicle, and (b) non-recirculation, in which the
car air ducts are opened to bring in the fresh air from out-
side. Even though using a car in recirculation mode does
not allow the outside air to enter the car, still, this mode
increases the level of CO2 inside the vehicle, causing the
risk of passengers feeling drowsy [2, 11]. Recirculating the
vehicular cabin air had numerous advantages in terms on
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Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments (2022) 8:105–115
human health and energy savings [36]. Based on the cor-
rect usage of air-circulation mode, vehicle indoor air quality
can be significantly optimized [30]. Various studies have
proven that recirculation of air inside the vehicle chamber
can reduce the level of pollutants. Even though, around 85%
of the particulate polluants are trapped by car filters, still a
small percentage still manges to penetrate through the filters
[35]. A similar study also highlighted the improvement in
the quality of air inside the vehicle while driving on a high-
way with recircuatop mode on [22]. To study the effect of
CO2 levels on recircualtion mode, a mathematical model was
proposed by Jung [11]. Extending the proposed model, one
more enhancement was made which focused on controlling
the amount of recirculation [7]. Fruin et al. [4] emphasized
on the importance on in-vehicle environment and how keep-
ing the vehicle in recirculation mode can significantly lower
the amount of ultra-fine particles entering the vehicle cabin.
In this direction, a model to qualitfy air exahange rate was
developed—this model used CO2 released by vehicle occu-
pants and studied it under different conditons like speed of
vehicle, AC settings, etc. The study was concluded by testi-
fying that was the rise and fall of CO2 inside a vehicle follow
the mass balance model [13, 20].
Jain [10] conducted a study in passenger vehicles under
different ventilation modes to find out the impact of in-vehi-
cle particulate matter concentrations on passengers’ health.
It was concluded that particulate matters concentrations
were higher in winter season and for non-AC vehicles. Fu
[5] studied the impact of in-cabin air quality on humans—for
this study, the author considered an airway traffic. A similar
study [6] was conducted to model the relative humidity lev-
els in passenger cars using mass balance equations. Micucci
and Corno [18] emphasized on the suitability of pervasive
systems and ubiquitous communication for monitoring the
health of the users. Since the user data collected go to a
cloud, reliability also becomes as important factor here.
Many studies have also laid emphasis on efficient data col-
lection for different sensor-based applications—these studies
primarily focus on accuracy of data, response time, and user
privacy [21, 27].
3 Mobile sensing system
The sensing system consists of an off-the-shelf sensor
Sensordrone (Fig. 1) [26] with an additional module for
sensing CO2 levels, and an Android smartphone. Sensor-
drone consists of 11 in-built sensors; for this work, we have
used: Ambient Temperature sensor with a sensing range
of − 20 °C to 60 °C with an accuracy of 0.5 °C, Rela-
tive Humidity sensor with a sensing range of 0–100%, RH
and an accuracy of 2% in the range of 20–80% RH (an
accuracy of 4% outside this range). Additionally, COZIR
Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments (2022) 8:105–115
Fig. 1 Sensordrone and android
application
GC-0010 module is connected to Sensordrone to measure
the change in CO2 levels. This module has a sensing range
of 0–2000 ppm with an accuracy of 50 ppm or 3% of sensed
reading. Sensordrone is connected to Android phone via
Bluetooth Low Energy. Android smartphone hosts a data
collection and visualization application. The application
stores all sensed data and displays the last known read-
ings of CO, CO2 on the phone’s screen in 3 groups: (a)
Good (CO2: 0–1000 ppm and CO: 0–5 ppm, (b) moder-
ate (CO2:1000–1500 ppm and CO: 5–10 ppm), and (c) bad
(CO2: 1500 ppm and CO: 10 ppm).
4 Experimental setup and testbed
4.1 Chamber exposure setup
For our experiment, we used a sedan car with indoor
dimensions as 2.60 m × 1.55 m × 1.32 m and an in-cabin
volume of 5319.6 L. The car is equipped with a 2 L petrol
engine. To prevent any air exchange, recirculation mode
was kept on and all the windows were closed. Prior to col-
lection of data in each experiment, the air in the vehicle
chamber was recirculated to 400 ppm, i.e., the normal CO2
levels [14].
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4.2 Data collection setup
This consisted of the Samsung galaxy S4 phone with our
AQM application hosted and the Sensordrone. To calibrate
and stabilize the Sensordrone, we sensed data for 10 days
and observed that the device took approximately 2.6 min to
get a stabilized reading. To get accurate readings, we placed
the Sensordrone approximately 2 feet (0.61 m) away from
the front and side air vents of the vehicle and more than 3
feet above the vehicle’s foot vents. Sensordrone sensor was
placed in the vehicle, so that it did not get directly exposed
to sunlight coming in the vehicle, heat, or breathing by the
occupants. The sampling rate was one reading per minute.
For this experiment, four humans occupied the vehicle.
These occupants aged between 25 and 50 years and their
heights were between 158 and 180 m with body weights
between 55 and 80 kg. Two occupants were at the front and
the rest two were at the back seat. To fine tune our exper-
imental setup, data were collected for 10 days, and read-
ings were observed. After this period, we began our actual
data collection for city driving conditions. A road stretch
of 19 km with 6 roundabouts and moderate traffic condi-
tions was identified. To simulate close to ideal city driving
conditions, we maintained the average speed of the vehicle
between 30 and 40 km/h. We observed that, for this entire
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process, the mean speed was 36 km/h [14]. We collected
around 1100 data points over a period of time. We used 80%
of the data of training our ARIMA and SVR models, and the
remaining 20% data were used to testing the models.
Figure 2 shows the variation of CO2 levels inside the
vehicle when the ignition is switched off; doors and windows
are closed, with all occupants inside. It can be observed that
with no air recirculation and no exchange of air, there was a
sharp increase in CO2 levels. CO2 concentration in the vehi-
cle chamber crossed 500 ppm, 1000 ppm, and 1500 ppm,
eventually reaching 2001 ppm (maximum range of the Sen-
sordrone device) at times t = 1 min, t = 4 min, t = 7 min,
and t = 11 min, respectively. This experiment leads to an
important observation that sitting in an idle car with multiple
occupants leads to high levels of CO2 within a small duration
of time, as there is no air recirculation or ventilation [14].
4.3 Science of rise in CO2 levels inside a vehicular
chamber
CO2 is released during the human respiration process. For cal-
culting the CO2 produced by a human body, we consider the
molar ratio of the volume of CO2 exhaled with the volume of
O2 consumed. This ratio is known as the respiratory quotient.
A person’s metabolic rate (MET) is related to his/her oxygen
consumption, CO2 production, and RQ as follows [12, 19]:
MET = 1200 × (0.23 × RQ + 0.77) × VO2 ∕Ad (Btu∕h sqft),
(1)
Fig. 2 CO2 levels when ignition is off
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Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments (2022) 8:105–115
where RQ = respiratory quotient, VO2 = volumetric rate of
oxygen consumed, and Ad = dubois area, which is defined
as the average surface area of an adult (1.83 m2), and Btu is
British Thermal Unit.
For our experiment, the activity involves sitting inside
a vehicle and driving a vehicle, and therefore, we took the
MET rate as 1.5 [12]. Hence, the CO2 generation rate turns
out to be 0.40 L/min per person.
We considered our vehicle cabin to be a single compart-
ment chamber, and used mass balance equation [16, 23] as:
dC
V = Q(Co(t) − C(t)) + G(t), (2)
dV
where V = Vehicle chamber volume, C(t) = CO2 concentra-
tion within the vehicle chamber at time t, G(t) = CO2 genera-
tion rate, Co(t) = Supply concentration of CO2, Q = Airflow
rate from/to the vehicle chamber, where,
G
Q=
Ceq − Co
, (3)
Ceq = CO2 concentration in equilibrium.
Taking standard assumption of Q and Co(t) as constant
and G equal to zero, value of C(t) simplifies to:
C(t) = Co + (C(0) − Co)e−𝜆(t) , (4)
where 𝜆 = Q∕V. (5)
Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments (2022) 8:105–115
This computed value of CO2 at time t with rate of ventila-
tion λ is used to suggest corrective measures because of rise
in CO2 levels.
5 Predictive modeling of in‑vehicle CO2
concentrations
To determine the CO2 concentration at an instant in future,
several forecasting models could be used, important ones
being statistical, stochastic, machine learning, and hybrid
models [33]. Linear, multiple linear, quantile, and kernel
ridge regression techniques are examples of statistical meth-
ods [28]. Stochastic models may include auto-regressive
moving average (ARMA), auto-regressive integrated mov-
ing average (ARIMA), Kalman filtering and exponential
smoothing, etc. [31]. Statistical models such as linear and
quantile regression models have a limitation of not taking
into account the past values of AQI while forecasting the
future values. In this work, we have developed forecast
model using SVR and have further evaluated its performance
with ARIMA model [15].
5.1 Prediction using ARMA/ARIMA
The time-series shown in Fig. 2 does not maintain a linear
relationship over time. The statistical properties of the time-
series such as variance and correlations are not consistent
over time. Such non-stationary time-series is best evaluated
with the help of auto-regressive moving average (ARMA)
model. The ARMA model is derived by combining the auto-
regressive (AR) and the moving average (MA) processes. In
AR model, the present CO2 concentration (Pt) is dependent
upon the prior CO2 values. It is defined as:
( )
Pt = f Pt−1 , Pt−2 , Pt−3 , Pt−4 , … , Pt−k , 𝜙t , (6)
where Pt is the predicted CO2 concentration, Pt−1, Pt−2, Pt−3,
Pt−4, …, Pt−k are the ‘k’ earlier observed values of CO2 con-
centrations, and ϕt is the error term. Our AR model, when
Pt depends on ‘k’ previous CO2 observations, is described
with the help of the equation:
Pt = 𝛼0 + 𝛼1 Pt−1 + 𝛼2 Pt−2 + 𝛼3 Pt−3 + … + 𝛼k Pt−k + 𝜙t ,
(7)
where α0, α1, α2, α3, …,αk are the coefficients of the prior
CO2 values to be resolved and ϕt is the error term. Our mov-
ing averages model uses the random error or white noise
terms of the CO2 time-series to forecast Pt:
( )
Pt = f 𝜙t−1 , 𝜙t−2 , 𝜙t−3 , 𝜙t−4 , … , 𝜙t−m , (8)
where Pt is the predicted CO2 concentration value and ϕt−1,
ϕt−2, ϕt−3, ϕt−4, …, ϕt−m are the ‘m’ random error terms
109
of CO2 concentration observed previously. Our MA model,
when Pt that depends on ‘m’ previously observed error term
values is described as:
Pt = 𝛃0 + 𝛃1 𝜙t−1 + 𝛃2 𝜙t−2 + 𝛃3 𝜙t−3 + … + 𝛃m 𝜙t−m , (9)
where β0, β1, β2, β3, …, βm are the coefficients of the white
noise terms to be resolved. The time-series shown in Fig. 2 is
perceived to be a combination of AR and MA components,
referred to as ARMA(k, m). Our ARMA model, which is
composed of ‘k’ previously observed CO2 concentration
values and ‘m’ prior white noise terms, is represented by
the equation:
Pt = 𝛼0 + 𝛼1 Pt−1 + 𝛼2 Pt−2 + 𝛼3 Pt−3 + … + 𝛼k Pt−k + 𝛃0
+ 𝛃1 𝜙t−1 + 𝛃2 𝜙t−2 + 𝛃3 𝜙t−3 + … + 𝛃m 𝜙t−m.
(10)
Prediction using ARMA/ARIMA involves figuring out
whether or not our CO2 concentration time-series can be
made stationary. A time-series is termed as stationary if its
mean and variance are consistent with time:
[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
E 𝐏1 = E 𝐏2 = E 𝐏3 = . . . = E 𝐏k = Constant,
(11)
[ ] [ ] [ ]
Var 𝐏𝟏 = Var 𝐏2 = . . . = Var 𝐏k = Constant, (12)
where ‘E’ denotes mean, ‘Var’ denotes variance, P1, …, Pk
are prior CO2 values, and ‘k’ is the number of CO2 concen-
tration values under consideration.
Forecast using ARIMA requires the time-series under
observation to be stationary. The statistical properties such
as mean, variance, and autocorrelation of a stationary time-
series are all constant over time. However, if a time-series
is not stationary, the correlations between the lagged values
are not constant over time.
Stationarity test was performed on the CO2 concentration
time-series (Fig. 2) in the first step, and it was found that
the time-series was not stationary. Therefore, the time-series
was differenced with respect to time to make it stationary,
one with constant mean and variance. The time sequence
became stationary after single differencing, with the vari-
ance and mean becoming constant with respect to time. The
CO2 concentration–time sequence after single differencing
is shown in Fig. 3.
The stationary CO2 series obtained after single differenc-
ing is termed as Integrated of the order 1 and is indicated
as I(1). If the series has to be differenced ‘n’ times until it
becomes stationary, it is represented as I(n). The next step
in prediction using ARIMA is to determine the autocorrela-
tion function (ACF) and the partial autocorrelation function
(PACF). The ACF explains the way the data points in the
CO2 time-series are associated with each other. It is com-
puted by determining the correlation between the current
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110 Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments (2022) 8:105–115

Fig. 3 CO2 concentration time-series after single differencing

CO2 concentration (Pt) and the concentration ‘k’ lags prior and BIC values and is hence used in the prediction of the
to the current value, (Pt−k): CO2 time-series. The actual and forecasted CO2 concentra-
( ) tion values are shown in Fig. 5.
( ) cov Pt, Pt−k The goodness of fit of the proposed ARIMA (0,1,0)
𝜌 = Cor Pt, Pt−k = √ ( ) √ ( ), (13) model is evaluated by plotting the autocorrelation function
var Pt, × var Pt−k
of the fitted model residuals. The plots of the ACF coef-
ficients of the residuals of the fitted ARIMA model are
where ρ is the correlation between Pt and Pt−k, var(Pt) and
shown in Fig. 6. It is observed that the majority of the ACF
var(Pt−k) are the variances of Pt and Pt−k, and cov(Pt, Pt−k) is
coefficients of the fitted ARIMA model fall well within the
the covariance between Pt and Pt−k, respectively. ACF is use-
limits (− 1.96/√K, + 1.96/√K), K being the total number of
ful in determining the degree to which the present CO2 value
samples observed (the limits are indicated by the dotted blue
is related to the prior values, and the number of previous
line in the residual ACF plot of Fig. 6). As seen in Fig. 6,
observations to be taken into account to obtain the present
there is little correlation between model residuals, with their
and future CO2 concentrations. The ACF and PACF plots
distribution being nearly Gaussian. This confirms that the
against lags for the CO2 time-series (Fig. 4) are used in the
model fit is optimal.
selection of the optimum ARIMA (k, n, m) model. As seen
in Fig. 4, peaks are observed for ACF at lag values of 0 and
12, and for PACF at lag values of 12 and 18, respectively.
5.2 Prediction using support vector regression
In the third step, the values for the orders ‘k’ and ‘m’ of
We constructed the time-series ARIMA model from past
the AR and MA processes are determined. The lags at which
values of CO2 concentration The auto-regressive model is a
significant ACF and PACF values are observed are selected
function of past CO2 values except for the deviations intro-
as the initial order values for the AR and MA processes (0
duced by the error term. The moving average procedure is
and 12 for AR and 12 and 18 for MA respectively). Bayesian
used to eliminate any inter-correlations of the error term to
Information Criterion (BIC) and Akaike Information Crite-
its own past or future values.
rion (AIC) are utilized to determine the most appropriate
However, ARIMA is a general univariate model and it
ARIMA model. ARIMA (0,1,0) is found to have lowest AIC
has been developed on the assumption that our time-series
is linear and stationary. However, there are underlying

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Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments (2022) 8:105–115 111

Fig. 4 Autocorrelation function (ACF) and partial autocorrelation function (PACF) values for the CO2 time-series against lags

Fig. 5 Actual and forecasted

values of the time-series of CO2
concentrations using ARIMA
(0,1,0) model. The blue line
illustrates the actual CO2 con-
centration values plotted against
time and the red line shows the
predicted CO2 values for the
same duration

relationships among variables in the time-series that are
very complex and the mathematical form of dependencies
unknown. Support Vector Machine (SVM) implements a
learning algorithm useful for recognizing subtle patterns in
complex data sets. SVM projects the data into high-dimen-
sional space, and maximizes the margins between classes
or minimizes the error margin for regression. There are two
main categories of SVM: support vector classification (SVC)
and support vector regression (SVR).
SVR is a machine learning technique based on statistics
learning. SVR attempts to find a function f (y = f(x) + noise)
which is able to predict new cases. This is achieved by train-
ing the SVR model on a training set. This process involves
the sequential optimization of an error function. It realizes
non-linear mapping of three-dimensional space by kernel
function. Support vector regression works on the same prin-
ciple as SVM. The basic idea is to map the input variables
into high-dimensional feature space via non-linear map-
ping function. After that, the risk minimization principle is
used to create the optimal decision function in the feature
space. This optimal function approximates the relationships
between the input and output. Let TS be training samples:

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112 Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments (2022) 8:105–115

Fig. 6 Plot of autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation coefficients of the residuals using ARIMA (0,1,0) model

TS = {(xi, yi), i = 1, 2, … , l}, (14) ⎧ l � �

⎪ ∑
min 21 ����𝜔2 ���� + C 𝜉i + 𝜉i∗
where, xi 𝜀Rd is input vector of the ith training sample, yi ∈ R ⎪ 𝜔,b i=1
⎪ ⎧
is the corresponding output value, and l is the number of ⎨ ⎪ i y − 𝜔𝜙(x) − b ≤ 𝜀 + 𝜉i , i = 1, 2, .., l (18)
samples in the training set: ⎪ s.t.⎨ −yi + 𝜔𝜙(x) + b ≤ 𝜀 + 𝜉i∗
⎪ ⎪
⎪ ⎩ 𝜉i ≥ 0, 𝜉i∗ ≥ 0
f (x) = 𝜔T 𝜙(x) + b, (15) ⎩
where ω and b are the regression factors, and ϕ(x) is a non- where, ε is the error requirement of regression function to
linear mapping function that maps the input space X into the determine the number of support vectors and guarantee the
high-dimensional feature space f. f(x) can be estimated by sparseness of the solution. ξ and 𝜉 ∗ are the variables that are
minimizing the structure risk function, as described below: used to control the upper and lower bounds of the output, as
∑l shown in Fig. 7.
1 || 2 || ( )
R(f ) = ||𝜔 || + C L𝜀 yi , f (X) (16) The quadratic problem of Eq. 18 is solved using the
2 || || i=1 Lagrange function and the kernel function. The dual form
of optimization problem is described below:
where 12 ||||𝜔2 |||| is used as a measure of function smoothness,
and C is a constant determining the trade-off between model ⎧ l l �
∑ ∑ � � �
complexity and predictive ability. ⎪ max [− 1 𝛼i − 𝛼i∗ K xi xj −
The loss function L𝜀 is described as follows: ⎪ 𝛼,𝛼 ∗ ,b 2
i=1 j=1
⎪∑ l � � ∑ l � �� �
{ ⎪ 𝛼i + 𝛼i∗ 𝜀 − 𝛼i − 𝛼i∗ yi
0 |y − f (x)| ≤ 𝜀 ⎪ i=1
L𝜀 (f (x), y) = (17) i=1
|y − f (x)| − 𝜀 |y − f (x)| ≥ 𝜀 ⎪ ⎧∑ l � �
⎨ ∗
𝛼i + 𝛼i = 0 , (19)
where f(x) is the forecast and y are the corresponding obser- ⎪ s.t.⎪ i=1
⎪ ⎨ 0 ≤ 𝛼i ≤ C
vation. To find ω and b, the convex quadratic problem can ⎪ ⎪ ⎩ 0 ≤i 𝛼i∗ ≤ C
be described as follows: ⎪
⎪
⎪
⎩

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Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments (2022) 8:105–115 113

Fig. 7 Support vector regression

where ε is the error requirement
of regression function. ξ and
𝜉 ∗ are used to control the upper
and lower bounds of the output

where αi and αi* are Lagrange’s multipliers, and K(xi xj ) is a for ε and for C, it is performed over the range: (1–100).
Kernel function. The kernel function is a symmetric posi- The SVR model with cost C = 1, ε = 0.1, number of support
tive real number function which satisfies the Mercer condi- vectors = 17, and radial basis kernel function is found to be
tion. Solving the above equations, the regression equation optimum. As shown in Fig. 8, the tuned SVR model is used
is obtained as: to forecast CO2 concentration values.
l
The prediction performance of the two models is depicted
∑ with the help of a graph in Fig. 9. ARIMA predicts that the
f (x) = 𝜔∗ 𝜙(x) + b∗ = 𝛼i − 𝛼i∗ K xi x + b∗ . (20)
( ) ( )
i=1
CO2 concentration reaches the threshold of 2500 in 13 min
and 10 s, and support vector regression model predicts that
The regularization penalty parameter (C) and the allow- it occurs in 12 min and 22 s.
able error (ε) must be tuned before using SVR for predic-
tion. These parameters are tuned using the R function tune.
svm. Grid search is performed over the range: (0.10–0.90)

Fig. 8 Actual and forecasted

CO2 concentration values using
the tuned SVR model with 17
support vectors and radial basis
kernel function. The blue line
shows the actual CO2 concen-
tration values plotted against
time and the green line depicts
the predicted CO2 concentration
values for the same duration

13
114 Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments (2022) 8:105–115

Fig. 9 Prediction performance

of ARIMA (0,1,0) and the tuned
SVR models are compared and
the time at which they cross the
threshold of CO2 concentration
of 2500 ppm is recorded

6 Performance evaluation Table 1 Performance analysis Model ARIMA SVR

of ARIMA and SVR models
In this section, prediction performance of the two models RMSE 55.32 ppm 47.91 ppm
SVR and ARIMA is evaluated using Root-Mean-Square MAPE 3.79% 2.18%
Error (RMSE) and Mean Absolute Percentage Error
(MAPE).
7 Conclusion
1. Root-Mean-Square Error (RMSE) is useful when large
errors are particularly undesirable: In this paper, we have developed a versatile sensing system
√ using Sensordrone and an Android phone, to measure the
N
change in CO2 values which ultimately affects the air quality
√
√1 ∑
(21)
( ( ))
RMSE = √ yi − f xi , inside a vehicular chamber. Our sensing system can be ret-
N i=1
rofitted in any vehicle. Using this sensing setup, controlled
where, N is the number of observations, yi is the actual experiments were conducted to collect CO2 data inside a car
CO2 concentration value at time instant i, xi is the input chamber, both in idle condition and city driving condition.
vector (time), and f is the forecast model. The collected data are then used to predict the CO2 concen-
The RMSE for SVR and ARIMA models is 47.91 ppm trations using ARIMA and SVR models. Both these models
and 55.32 ppm, respectively, which indicates that SVR are evaluated using MAPE and RMSE. It is evident that
performs fewer or lesser large errors. SVR model outperformed ARIMA model in predicting CO2
2. Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) is calculated concentrations. The RMSE for SVR and ARIMA models
by averaging the absolute percentage error terms: is 47.91 ppm and 55.32 ppm, respectively, indicating that
( ) SVR outperformed ARIMA in predicting the CO2 build-up
N
1 ∑ || yi − f xi || inside the vehicle.
MAPE = | | × 100, (22)
N i=0 || yi |
|
where N is the number of observations, yi is the actual car- References
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