Computers, Society, and Nature

Bike couriers as human sensors to track air pollution:

Cellphones used by bicycle couriers are monitoring air pollution in Cambridge, UK, and beaming the data back to a research lab.

The technique is made possible by small wireless pollution sensors and custom software that allows the phones to report levels of air pollutants wherever they happen to be around town.

The information can be mapped so that it can be viewed by the general public (and other bike messengers, who are on the front line of this exposure).

What is interesting is the multiplicity of possible applications for these mobile sensors (e.g., the use for noise sensing). I look forward to their discussion of interpolation techniques to maximizes this non-randomized data input.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 5:22 pm and is filed under geographic information systems, ICTtools, public health, surveillance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.