An Array of Things
Chicago is making itself one of the smartest cities of the country by growing its open data economy. Among other things being done in the city, project of An Array of Things makes interaction between sensors in our bodies and sensors in our environment ,possible.Imagine if you are walking through the city at 10 pm in the night , an application will tell you which route has the most light or which route has the most pedestrian activity .
The Urban Center for Computation and Data of the Computation Institute of Chicago built An Array of Things as an urban sensing project that will collect data on the city’s environment, infrastructure and activities such as Temperature, vibration, air quality, precipitation, humidity, pedestrian and human traffic noise or light.
These are basically a network of sensors/ communication devices placed throughout the city. The data collected will be free and open. The main purpose was to provide real-time data to researchers, academia, policy-makers and residents to use it make Chicago healthier, cost efficient and more livable by addressing issues such urban flooding beforehand. All the data collected will be transmitted to Argone National Laboratory, which will again be published to the City Of Chicago’s open data network.
The company claims that privacy is built into the design so that there is no individual or personal data collected.
“We started with the principle of transparency and openness,” explains Charlie, Catlett director of the Institute, “and working backwards from that, we had to design devices that prevented the collection of information about individuals.”
At the end of 2015, they received a grant of $3.1 million from the National Science Foundation as part of the Smart City Initiative .The nodes are expected to be mounted on streetlight traffic poles around the city by 2017. This project is being done in partnership with Chicago’s Department of Information and Technology, Department of Transportation, researchers, neighborhood groups and community members.
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