Array of Things

A new urban initiative called Array of Things is attempting to be a “fitness tracker for a city” by installing sensors throughout the City of Chicago.

Problem: Local Pollution

The WHO estimates that urban air pollution, most of which is generated by vehicles, industry, and energy production, is estimated to kill 1.2 million people annually. While most of these deaths occur in developing countries, Chicago still faces significant issues: in 2016 Cook County was given an “F” for air quality by the American Lung Association. There are many pieces of this problem that Chicago is attempting to tackle, but one important aspect is understanding how air pollution affects citizen’s day-to-day lives and the varying effects and impact of different levels of pollution on different regions of the city. The goal of increasing understanding is to aid the city is developing additional programs to curb air pollution and to engage with the public to find solutions.

 

Augmented Perception Solution

Array of Things is an effort (sponsored in part by the City of Chicago) to install hundreds of inexpensive, replaceable sensor devices across the city to track all sorts of pollution indices. These sensors use carbon monoxide detectors and pollen counters to measure air pollution and cameras and microphones to measure congestion and noise pollution. The data measured will then be both relayed to relevant departments in the City of Chicago and posted online to the public. The hope is that this data will help city planners better optimize planning decisions (e.g. traffic flow around a school or where to install a bike path) and potentially allow the public and academics to better understand the role hyper-local pollution has on citizen health and well-being. Besides focusing on air pollution, Array of Things is also striving to be a platform for monitoring a host of other city data. While the ultimate applications are unknown, they see the potential to leverage this sensor equipment to transform the way city planning decisions are made, not just from a health perspective.

Array of Things Results

Results have been limited. The first machines were installed in late 2016 and data has yet to be made publicly available. That said, other cities are excited about this idea – with Seattle as a likely second city for installation and Bristol and Newcastle as the first international destinations.

Proposed Modifications

We have two major changes we would propose to this project. First, we would strive to solidify some of the goals and particularly the involvement with the city. While the City of Chicago has paid lip service to the project, there are no concrete changes that the city has agreed to make based on the results. Getting buy-in for making concrete changes (e.g. committing to help clean up the more polluted but populated areas of the city) before seeing results would help increase the chance that changes to improve citizen health would actually be made. Along those lines, creating concrete ratings to grade different areas in terms of pollution and broadcasting those ratings would help both incentivize local changes and increase awareness of high-pollution areas. Second, we would advocate for limiting the scope of the goal of Array of Things, at least in terms of its marketing/pitch. In most of their marketing, they describe the ability of their system to do everything from notifying individuals of ice patches to finding the most populated route for a late-night walk. While these are potential applications of their sensors (and we do not advocate removing any sensors), tailoring the vision to have more concrete and limited goals will make it successful in the near term. By trying to do everything at the same time, the effort risks overstating its value and missing out on the most impactful results, particularly those around pollution.

 

Sources:

https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/arrayofthings.jsp

https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2016/08/29/chicago-becomes-first-city-launch-array-things

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39229221

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3115224/internet-of-things/chicago-deploys-computers-with-eyes-ears-and-noses.html

https://gcn.com/articles/2017/03/07/sensor-net-resilience.aspx

http://www.who.int/heli/risks/urban/urbanenv/en/

http://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/healthy-air/sota/city-rankings/states/illinois/

http://www.govtech.com/fs/Array-of-Things-Expands-to-Cities-with-Research-Partnerships.html