The nascent system is called CitiSense and is being developed by a team from UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering. Computer scientists there are planning to boost the number of air quality monitors in the city from five official Environmental Protection Agency sensors to hundreds or even thousands.
Through CitiSense, the team plans aims create and activate a network of tiny environmental sensors. These sensors would be equipped to people or set up at fixed points, possibly powered by alternative sources rather than batteries. Each sensor would relay air quality data to cell phones that pass by, which would in turn transmit that data to centralized computers.
Several of the researchers are working on using statistical artificial intelligence to filter out data from failed or problematic sensors. Plus the team still has privacy and logistics issues to iron out, but a grant from the National Science Foundation for the system is helping the scientists get CitiSense closer to reality.
Here in New York, only morbid curiosity would propel me to ask what places in the neighborhood are least polluted at this moment. It would be even more impressive if computer scientists could get my embarrassingly old phone to pitch in on such an effort.Photo: Southern California sky following wildfires in 2007. Credit: Erin Pettigrew.
Tags: Cell Phones, Computers, Green Tech, Pollution, Sensors
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