CitySense - Air Q Hotspots
Ooooooh! I like it! An urban scale wireless sensor network to monitor air quality!
CitySense - An Open, Urban-Scale Sensor Network Testbed
CitySense will consist of 100 wireless sensors deployed on light poles around the city of Cambridge, MA. Each node will consist of an embedded PC, 802.11a/b/g interface, and various sensors for monitoring weather conditions and air pollutants. Most importantly, CitySense is intended to be an open testbed that researchers from all over the world can use to evaluate wireless networking and sensor network applications in a large-scale urban setting.
Dam! A few years ago i was working on a quality of life indicator project where Environment was a measure and air quality was part of that measure. When we started to look for longitudinal air quality data for 21 cities across Canada we came up a little short. Read Section 5 of Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators: Air Quality Indicator: Data Sources and Methods to understand the limitations or see some of the data reported on the National Air Pollution Surveillance Network (NAPS). These are great, but as you read you will discover that there are few sensors in each city and they are not necessarily optimally located. Looking at this map you discover that Ottawa and Gatineau have only two monitoring stations. Further, when you look at the dates on the NAPs reports, well, let’s just say that the neo liberal policies of the 90s and fiscal responsibility were not good for environmental knowledge reporting in Canada!
If you know the Outaouais region, you will know that it is rural, urban and huge. Particulates in rural areas are very different and have different sources than downtown, however, the wind picks up dust from the rural areas and brings it into town, while car exhaust and such gets trapped in the valleys between buildings but also gets sent to rural areas. Note that Ottawa in the summer has numerous smog alerts and air quality is a major issue. Yet there is only one Sensor! Sheesh!
What i like about CitySense is the simplicity of the wireless technology and the large number of sensors (Read the Summary or the NSF Proposal for details). This enables good geographical coverage and concentrated quantitative data gathered over time to help reveal the qualitative issues around air quality in particular parts of town. Like any geographic phenomenon distribution is always uneven and CitySense will help highlight that!
A series of air quality wireless hotspots! How great is that? Imagine leveraging community wireless infrastructures to have multiple purposes:
- Wireless Hotspots
- Air Quality Monitoring
- Location portal pages reporting that local’s sensor feeds on a map with all the other sensors
- Some kind of communty sensor data repository system
- In collaboration with scientists, citizens and municipal planners!
Youuzee!
