Several projects coordinated by MIT's Senseable City lab have revealed the powerful urban insights that can occur when people are linked via networks of sensors. Video and animations about a selection of such projects can be seen below. 

LIVE Singapore uses real-time data recorded by myriad communications devices, microcontrollers and sensors to analyze the pulse of the city, telling residents how they can reach their homes fastest, reduce their neighborhood’s energy consumption and find a taxi when a rainstorm hits.

Trash Track reveals how garbage flows through and out of Seattle's waste-management system. Some items traveled across the U.S. to legal and illegal dumps. The results could uncover ways to improve compliance and to minimize carbon dioxide emissions by transporting waste more efficiently.

Real-Time Copenhagen generates data about constantly shifting traffic and pollution patterns, as well as where nightlife is unfolding.

2 Comments

1. 1. Tonya van Dijk 08:08 PM 8/16/11

   These are great initiatives. With tools like these, you can really see how people can help their communities in their own ways.
   
   Other initiatives that illustrates civic engagement are Creative Community Collaboration (Bristol, Connecticut - Bristol Rising), A Contest for Community Improvements (Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham - Prize2theFuture) and Community 311 for Smartphones (San Jose Mobile City Hall mobile app). Read more about these at http://crowdsourcing.org/l/2636.

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2. 2. jdevoo 04:39 AM 8/27/11

   Great post and very interesting videos.
   Sustainability dashboards providing real-time information will become the norm. I believe they should be implemented at multiple levels - city but also block and household. Mobile technology is becoming widespread to serve both as sensing and monitoring platform.
   
   When I started interesting myself for what I call "Citizen Sensing" I started with a focus on sensing ecosystem state and adoption trends in sustainable practices. I have since then expanded my research to include resilience-oriented goals where citizens will be able to detect and react to sudden step-changes in the environment which force rapid adaptation, e.g. transportation disruptions, interrupted food supplies, etc.
   
   We are in the infancy of these services which should be part of opengov initiatives and 311 services as pointed out by Tonya.
   
   I have started a list of #citizensensing projects on my blog http://citizensensing.posterous.com where I covered for example the detection of radioactivity in Japan by citizens - http://citizensensing.posterous.com/patch-bay-japan

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