Techno-advanced lifestyle of smart city: Chicago

Chicago's IQ will be measured by Sensors now...!

The University of Chicago (UChicago) announced that the National Science Foundation has awarded a $3.1 million grant to support the development of Array of Things, an urban sensing instrument that will serve as a fitness tracker for the city. Starting next year, 500 Array of Things (AoT) nodes will measure data on Chicago’s environment, infrastructure and activity to scientifically investigate solutions to urban challenges ranging from air quality to urban flooding. The ultimate goal of this innovative community technology platform is to help make cities cleaner, healthier and more livable.

The grant will support a multidisciplinary team of designers, engineers and scientists at the Computation Institute (a joint initiative of UChicago and Argonne National Laboratory), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Northern Illinois University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.The Array of Things (AoT) is an urban sensing project, a network of interactive, modular sensor boxes that will be installed around Chicago to collect real-time data on the city’s environment, infrastructure, and activity for research and public use. AoT will essentially serve as a “fitness tracker” for the city, measuring factors that impact livability in Chicago such as climate, air quality and noise.

The nodes will initially measure temperature, barometric pressure, light, vibration, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone, ambient sound intensity, pedestrian and vehicle traffic, and surface temperature. Continued research and development will help create sensors to monitor other urban factors of interest such as flooding and standing water, precipitation, wind, and pollutants.

Array of Things is interested in monitoring the city’s environment and activity, not individuals. In fact, the technology and policy have been designed to specifically avoid any potential collection of data about individuals, so privacy protection is built into the design of the sensors and into the operating policies. Array of Things will not collect any personal or private information.

The nodes utilize an Argonne-developed technology platform called Waggle, created by Argonne’s Peter Beckman, Rajesh Sankaran and Catlett, that allows for powerful and secure remote processing of measurements before transmission of data to a central server.

Because all of the data will be published openly and without charge, it will also support the development of innovative applications, such as a mobile application that allows a resident to track their exposure to certain air contaminants, or to navigate through the city based on avoiding urban heat islands, poor air quality, or excessive noise and congestion.

In partnership with the City of Chicago, the nodes will be mounted on streetlight traffic signal poles around the city by 2017. Fifty nodes will be installed in early 2016, and the number is expected grow to 200 by the end of 2016 and 500 by the end of 2017. The location of these nodes will be determined in collaboration with the City of Chicago and input from researchers and community members.

Eleven nodes are currently undergoing testing on the University of Chicago campus. Additional funding for the project was provided by the University of Chicago Innovation Fund, Argonne, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

What Is The Array of Things?