Tracking Air Pollution by Cell Phone

Californians and Cell Phones to Track Air Pollution

“San Diego County has 3.1 million residents, 4,000 square miles, and only five official EPA air quality monitors. We know about the air quality in those exact spots but we know much less about the air quality in other places.”

“The goal of CitiSense is to build and deploy a wireless network in which hundreds or thousands of small environmental sensors carried by the public rely on cell phones to shuttle information to central computers where it will be analyzed, anonymized and reflected back out to individuals, public health agencies and San Diego at large.”

“At the same time, the sensor-wearing public will have the option to also wear biological monitors that collect basic health information, such as heart rate.”

“..also investigating how sensors fixed in the environment — rather than carried around by the general public—might be powered by solar, wind, or vibrational energy instead of batteries.”

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