Urban environmental sensing and visualization
To make our cities healthier and more livable, it is crucial to develop a deep understanding of urban environmental gradients at high spatio-temporal resolutions. Which streets are too noisy? Where is the air polluted? Traditionally, these data have been collected through fixed measuring stations. However, this method has proven to be too scattered to understand the strong environmental gradients that characterize urban environments. Here lies the great future advantage of the "Cityreader", a collaboration project between the Princeton University Environmental Fluid Mechanics lab and AZPML Architects, "Cityreader" makes use of mobile urban sensing technologies to collect high spatio-temporal urban environmental data affordably and efficiently. These custom-designed autonomous weather and air quality stations can be easily mounted onto any mobile platform such as buses or private vehicles that move through the city, covering a large urban extent. The resulting environmental data have far-superior spatial resolutions than traditional fixed environmental stations. "Cityreader" is scalable and affordable; it visualizes the collected data in real-time through mobile and web apps, thus informing public institutions, companies and citizens and empowering them to make environmentally-responsible urban planning decisions or to improve their everyday life.
