Chicago launches urban sensing project

The first phase of an urban sensing Array of Things project has begun in Chicago with the installation of the first of an eventual 500 nodes on city streets. The sensors will collect data on air quality, climate, traffic and other urban features, kicking off a partnership between the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory and the City of Chicago to better understand, serve and improve cities.
September 1, 2016 Read time: 2 mins

The first phase of an urban sensing Array of Things project has begun in Chicago with the installation of the first of an eventual 500 nodes on city streets. The sensors will collect data on air quality, climate, traffic and other urban features, kicking off a partnership between the University of Chicago, 5041 Argonne National Laboratory and the City of Chicago to better understand, serve and improve cities.

Array of Things is designed as a ‘fitness tracker’ for the city, collecting new streams of data on Chicago’s environment, infrastructure, and activity. This hyper-local, open data can help researchers, city officials, and software developers study and address critical city challenges, such as preventing urban flooding, improving traffic safety and air quality, and assessing the nature and impact of climate change.

In the first phase of the project, 50 nodes will be installed in August and September on traffic light poles in The Loop, Pilsen, Logan Square and along Lake Michigan. These nodes will contain sensors for measuring air and surface temperature, barometric pressure, light, vibration, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, ozone, and ambient sound intensity. Two cameras will collect data on vehicle and foot traffic, standing water, sky colour and cloud cover.

Initial node locations and data applications were determined based on interactions with community organisations and research groups. Some nodes will contain sensors for tracking air quality and its relationship with asthma and other diseases, while others will study pedestrian and vehicle flow and traffic safety or measure features related to urban weather and climate change.

Data collected by Array of Things nodes will be open, free and available to the public, researchers, and developers. After a brief period of testing and calibration, the project will publish data through the City of Chicago Data Portal, open data platform Plenar.io, and via application programming interfaces (APIs). As specified by the Array of Things privacy and governance policies, no personally identifiable information will be stored or released by sensor nodes.

Detection, Monitoring & Machine Vision Classification & Data Collection UTC

Related Content

  • September 22, 2014
    Lufft’s MARWIS moves weather
    A mobile road weather sensor is providing authorities with new options for monitoring road conditions and winter maintenance operations. Road and traffic engineers know the vulnerable points in their network – cold spots where ice forms first, high-banked roads where snow accumulates, fog pockets… Traditionally, most authorities will position weather stations at these points to detect and monitor road conditions during bad weather events.
    Read More
  • January 5, 2017
    City of London chiefs call for ban on new diesel cabs
    The City of London Corporation, local authority for the Square Mile, has called for a ban on new diesel private hire vehicles (PHVs) in its response to the Mayor of London’s air quality consultation. The Corporation also wants to see existing diesel PHVs removed from fleets as soon as possible to protect the public from exposure to toxic diesel emissions, with current licences phased out by 2020. The consultation had invited Londoners to have their say on the Mayor’s proposals to introduce a new Emiss
    Read More
  • July 27, 2012
    In vehicle systems allow drivers to provide travel information
    The use of a Vehicle Data Translator will allow every vehicle on a given segment of road to contribute to a highly accurate, readily accessible source of localised weather information, thus improving safety in all conditions. Sheldon Drobot and William P. Mahoney III, US National Center for Atmospheric Research, Paul A. Pisano, USDOT/Federal Highway Administration, and Benjamin B. McKeever, USDOT/Research and Innovative Technology Administration, write. On the morning of June 10 2009, under the cover of den
    Read More
  • September 6, 2017
    Remote remedies help US authorities identify bridge deficiencies
    Every day 185 million vehicles – cars, trucks, school buses, emergency response units - cross one or more of America’s 55,710 'structurally compromised' steel and concrete road bridges, the highest concentration of which are in Iowa (nearly 5,000), Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. Nearly 2,000 of these crossings are located on interstate highways, according to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association's recent analysis of the US Department of Transportation's 2016 National Bridge Inventory.
    Read More

Highlighted Content