
Google's mapping cars discover hundreds of underground gas leaks - state_machine
http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2016/05/google-mapping-cars-show-locations-of-hundreds-of-dallas-underground-gas-leaks.html/
======
Animats
That's useful. The mapping cars could carry some other useful sensors. Air
quality is obvious. Less obvious is RF leakage from cable TV cable, which can
interfere with other spectrum users. Cable companies used to have to check
this every two years, but they lobbied to not have to check it.

~~~
kbenson
Google's mapping cars are the metaphorical nanites in the bloodstream we've
been reading about in science fiction for decades, applied to the planet.
Mingling with our other cells, traveling our veins, arteries, reporting on the
general health of and providing a more complete picture of the system overall.

~~~
bigiain
I, for one, am not keen on having nanites in my bloodstream supplied and
controlled by the company who dropped from their code of conduct, and stopped
using "Don't Be Evil" as their motto: [http://time.com/4060575/alphabet-
google-dont-be-evil/](http://time.com/4060575/alphabet-google-dont-be-evil/)

(Top HN post in Feb 2021: "Alphabet Corp announces it's dropping support for
GoogleBlood starting April 1st: A blogpost advises users to replace their
blood with blood from alternative vendors and restore from backups as access
to all blood functionality (not just the SmartBlood(tm) features) will cease
at midnight Mar 31th. Advertisers with prepaid in-blood advertising bids will
be pro-rata credited in their AdsInside account.")

~~~
kbenson
I think perhaps you glossed over the part where I said "metaphorical".

~~~
bigiain
Nah, I got that. I was just using your post as a setup for my GoogleBlood
gag... It's probaby not as funny as I think it is… Sorry.

------
andrenotgiant
Another hint at what is to come when Google starts organizing the world's
_offline_ information.

Google Books and Google Streetview are just the tip of the iceberg.

I would be willing to bet that "massively distributed real-time data
collector" was listed as a key business case by whoever pitched self-driving
cars at Google.

------
danso
Is the collected raw data available? Would be interesting to cross-reference
what the Google cars found with 311 complaints.

Here's NYC's 311 data: [https://nycopendata.socrata.com/Social-
Services/311-Service-...](https://nycopendata.socrata.com/Social-
Services/311-Service-Requests-from-2010-to-Present/erm2-nwe9)

...I recall there being a category for people calling in gas odor, but the
Socrata site seems to be slow/down at the moment.

~~~
dfc
It looks like NYC is not in scope:

    
    
      > Dallas is one of nine participating cities, including
      > Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago and Jacksonville. This program 
      > was developed with scientists from Colorado State Univ

------
state_machine
More details on the program:
[https://www.edf.org/climate/methanemaps](https://www.edf.org/climate/methanemaps)
and the other cities they've mapped:
[https://www.edf.org/climate/methanemaps/city-
snapshots](https://www.edf.org/climate/methanemaps/city-snapshots)

~~~
mturmon
Thanks for pointing this out. I understand that EDF was the driving force
behind this initiative, but the fact that the sensors were mounted on Google
cars seems to have diverted attention from that fact.

There's a growing effort to monitor CO2, CH4, and CO at very fine spatial
scales, and to do inverse modeling to infer emission rates ("fluxes") from the
snapshots. (E.g.,
[https://megacities.jpl.nasa.gov/portal/](https://megacities.jpl.nasa.gov/portal/))

------
alex_g
Why are these sensors not placed on garbage trucks or police cars?

~~~
justizin
police cars don't systemically go down every street, garbage trucks, not a
terrible idea, but they are inherently .. very .. dirty. I wouldn't want to be
the engineer servicing sensors on them.

Also, you would probably register unreasonably high levels of all sorts of
things that are being released by decomp in the garbage.

~~~
caf
CH₄ and H₂S in particular, you would think.

------
janesvilleseo
Slightly off topic, but one idea I had was for Google to share road usage
stats with cities and businesses. Right now cities put out an air tube on the
road that counts the cars. Google could provide much more insight given they
already can tell you road congestion. They could give it away for free to a
city and/or make businesses pay for it.

~~~
aganders3
I think this is a service Strava offers, but for bicycles.

------
willcodeforfoo
I wonder if accelerometer data would be useful to determine road quality? It
may help cash strapped cities like here in Toledo prioritize the bumpiest
roads to fix.

------
ChuckMcM
This strikes me as an excellent IoT application, gas sensors are cheap and
simple SMS texting could send a message from an IoT device that it detected
gas and its GPS co-ordinates.

~~~
ars
> gas sensors are cheap

I wanted to buy one to check my pipes for leakage, but the only inexpensive
thing I could find was a go/no-go sensor, and nothing something with an actual
reading.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This one ([http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/Grove-Gas-
SensorMQ2-p-937.h...](http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/Grove-Gas-
SensorMQ2-p-937.html)) is $7, Its sensitivity can be adjusted by the pot, so
putting a digital potentiometer on the board and driving it remotely should
give you some "range". It isn't designed as a precision instrument but in an
IoT situation just watching sensors detect something over time, correlated
with wind speed and direction, should give useful information for the gas
company at least.

These guys
([http://lmsnt.com/applications/applicationideas/ch4/](http://lmsnt.com/applications/applicationideas/ch4/))
will sell you a sensor development kit. The commercial instruments are all
several hundred dollars but my experience with specialty tools is that they
have high prices to support high margins because they don't sell in very high
volumes.

~~~
joshvm
There are a few factors.

The gas sensors you can afford as a (poor) hobbyist tend to be
resistive/heater devices. You heat up a catalyst and monitor its resistance
which varies when a suitable gas is present. The downside is that typically
they're sensitive to all kinds of gases - e.g. methane, ethanol other volatile
organic compounds and so on. Either you can use them in a single-gas
environment, or where you would only expect one polluting gas, or you can have
a general threshold. Cheap and cheerful and nice for IoT home "air quality"
sensors, but useless for real measurements.

Most of the very expensive sensors - like the one you linked - have much
higher specificity. That methane detector is optical and is tuned precisely
for the IR absorption band of the gas. Optics and filters are expensive, plus
the driving circuitry and probably NIST-traceable calibration if you want it.
EDIT: It also uses a fairly unusual LED wavelength which adds to the price
(InGaS = money).

Other sensors, like Oxygen, have shelf lives of a few years and need to be
replaced even though they're horribly expensive ($200 or so).

A filtered methane sensor is about $50 (Figaro make a lot of nice gas
sensors):
[http://microcontrollershop.com/product_info.php?cPath=301_42...](http://microcontrollershop.com/product_info.php?cPath=301_428_579&products_id=6786)

AMS also make some nice inexpensive general VOC sensors like this one:
[http://www.digikey.co.uk/product-detail/en/ams/AS-
MLV-P2/AS-...](http://www.digikey.co.uk/product-detail/en/ams/AS-MLV-P2/AS-
MLV-P2CT-ND/5117220)

------
TheSpiceIsLife
From the article:

 _residents paid as much as $1.5 billion extra between 2000 to 2011 for gas
lost to leaks._

Is anyone able to calculate approximate how much gas this is in volume or
weight? 1.5 billion divided by residential gas price per unit?

~~~
maxerickson
Call it $10 per thousand cubic feet.

[http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3010us3m.htm](http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3010us3m.htm)

So 150 million units. Switching to the numbers I'm seeing quoted for
pipelines, 150 billion cubic feet.

This pdf lists _many_ pipelines pushing 1 billion cubic feet or more a day:

[http://www.ferc.gov/CalendarFiles/20120830220205-primer.pdf](http://www.ferc.gov/CalendarFiles/20120830220205-primer.pdf)

So at most a couple months of normal usage.

------
kaonashi
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyNeOKi2sO8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyNeOKi2sO8)

------
retox
And all they had to sacrifice was personal privacy!

~~~
AckSyn
Like all great futuristic advances we've seen in the last two decades that
REALLY put us into the "we're living in the future" category, there's a plus
and negative side.

I love that I can wear a watch that doubles as a phone, health monitor,
gps/mapping, mp3 player, etc.

The flip side of there being a loss of privacy would both be technological
(weak or no security in the device itself or the apps and services it uses)
and political (government saying "give me _all_ the data").

This cry of "but my privacy!" is nothing more than a useless complaint, and
does nothing to address the problem. We as citizens and consumers of such
great tech NEED to demand better device security as well as political reform.
Changes in how things are done and why.

So be picky about which tech you buy and politicians you vote. Be picky with
your time, money, votes.

Don't, however, waste time on comments that do nothing to address the problem.
That includes providing no information to further advance your ideology:
privacy. No product endorsements to sway us into purchasing or supporting
something which WILL keep your private info out of nosy third-party hands, or
info about politicians or policy we should be aware of?

That would be a pointless comment when you obviously care about something.

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences)

