Pervasive environmental monitoring implies a wide range of technical, but
also socio-political challenges, and this applies especially to the sensitive context of
the city. In this paper, we elucidate issues for bringing out pervasive urban sensor
networks and associated concerns relating to fine-grained information provision. We
present the Common Scents project, which is based on the Live Geography
approach, and show how it can overcome these challenges. As opposed to hitherto
sensing networks, which are mostly built up in monolithic and closed systems, the
Common Scents approach aims to establish an open, standards based and modular
infrastructure. This ensures interoperability, portability and flexibility, which are crucial
prerequisites for pervasive urban sensing. The implementation – a real-time data
integration and analysis system for air quality assessment – has been realised on top
of the CitySense sensor network in the City of Cambridge, MA US together with the
city’s Public Health Department responding to concrete needs of the city and its
inhabitants. The second pilot using mobile sensors mounted on bicycles has been
deployed in Copenhagen, Denmark. Preliminary results show highly fine-grained
variability of pollutant dispersion in urban environments.Singapore-MIT Alliance. Center for Environmental Sensing and MonitoringSingapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology CenterEuropean Commission (FP7 GENESIS project)Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft und ForschungResearch Studio iSPAC
