After a lull during COVID-19, researchers at MIT’s Senseable City Lab are restarting their City Scanner project work. First begun in 2017, the project relies on low-cost mobile sensor technology used in cities to check for air pollutants, energy leaks and health of roads and bridges.
Sensors were originally attached to garbage trucks that drove around the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of MIT, but could be connected to other vehicles in most any city’s fleet.
One clear advantage is that the mobile sensors are much less expensive than roadside environmental sensors and can cover larger areas with greater flexibility.
Data already collected in the project may be used to help guide future city policy development in the built environment, said Simone Mora, head of SCL’s City Scanner project. “The ultimate goal of this project is to democratize environmental data, to give back data to citizens,” he said.
Mora’s background includes a PhD in computer science from NTNU in Norway. He spoke as part of Sensor Innovation Week sponsored by Fierce Electronics and the full presentation is embedded here:
“We care about cities,” he said. “Cities are important because 50% of people live in cities. They use 75% of the energy produced worldwide and they emit 80% of the CO2 emissions. That means if you can do something to improve these numbers to improve cities, it will have a huge impact for everyone.”
Early sensors attached to garbage trucks included a particulate matter counter, a thermal counter, and a temperature and humidity sensor connected to a wireless network. With the sensors deployed on five trucks over six months, enough granular data was collected to be shared with other researchers globally. The sensors are designed in modular fashion so that a special gas sensor module can be attached if needed in a certain locale.
Recently, a newer sensing device has been designed for use as a prototype in several cities globally that is completely autonomous, solar powered and supports a range of sensors. It includes GPS, and a 3G modem. A powerful magnet is used to attach the device to vehicles. “It’s as big as a shoebox and you just drop it on top of a truck, car, or even in the future -- if we make it smaller -- a bike or scooter,” Mora said.
A pilot project has been restarted in New York City after the work was halted in 2020 due to the pandemic when the city was basically shut down. Other pilots will start or expand this year in Stockholm, Beirut, Sparwood in British Columbia, Canada and Oskemen, Kazakhstan. In Sparwood, sensors will be used to detect dust that is a product of mining activity. Researchers found that just 20 taxis were needed to cover Manhattan at least once a day to collect air quality data.
Data collected could help city planners and policymakers determine the location of schools in correlation to pollution hot spots. In the future, open data could be used to help homebuyers detect pollution on a specific street, Mora said.
MIT has also developed tools to help analyze the sensor data. A dashboard for city managers has been devised to analyze trends over time. With such data, cities can begin to pinpoint the sources of pollution.
Mora said a bit of detective work is involved in finding some pollution sources, including meeting with citizens to pick up tips. “Sensors are getting more and more precise but we still heavily rely on local knowledge to try to connect dots… to mitigate a number of environmental issues,” he said.
City Scanner is conducted by the MIT Senseable City Lab in collaboration with Cisco, Ford and Teck.
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