

Google Straps Aclima Sensors to Street View Cars to Map Air Pollution - Zweihander
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/28/software-eats-smog/?ncid=rss

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candeira
This is going to be interesting for many cities, but I can speak to the case
of Madrid.

The Partido Popular government fixed the pollution problem by moving the
sensors out of busy streets and into big parks that happen to be within the
city limits[1,2].

The historical continuity of measurements has been lost, but Google will now
provide data with more continuity. Or at least I hope it is provided.

[1]
[http://elpais.com/diario/2009/05/18/madrid/1242645857_850215...](http://elpais.com/diario/2009/05/18/madrid/1242645857_850215.html)
[2]
[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/022cf59c-3091-11e0-9de3-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/022cf59c-3091-11e0-9de3-00144feabdc0.html)

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MarkMc
As someone spending a large amount of time in India I am very concerned about
the extreme pollution level there. This was the best country-wide data I could
find on pollution: [http://imgur.com/sPtkwDj](http://imgur.com/sPtkwDj)

I would love it if Google could produce something more accurate!

~~~
known
[http://www.citylab.com/tech/2013/09/heres-where-youre-
most-l...](http://www.citylab.com/tech/2013/09/heres-where-youre-most-likely-
die-air-pollution/6946/)

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shawnps
This is the site I usually check:

[http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/](http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/)

Also, if I needed it, I'd probably build one of these:

[http://smartairfilters.com/en.html](http://smartairfilters.com/en.html)

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octo_t
Sounds like something related to Sidewalk Labs[1]?

[http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dan-doctoroff-and-
go...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dan-doctoroff-and-google-
announce-sidewalk-labs-300097255.html)

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deepGem
This is great to see. We are prototyping something similar - want to deploy
static sensors instead of strapping the sensors to vehicles. We initially
thought about the vehicle option by partnering with Uber/Lyft. Definitely cost
effective but getting relevant data from the same location at different time
slices will become a function of the vehicle's presence at that location and
time. A bit difficult to manage with a vehicle fleet whose primary function is
something else. Worth further exploration though.

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nimos
Neat but doesn't pollution vary significantly day to day and seasonally? It
seems like one drive through at random time/day/season wouldn't be enough data
to be meaningful.

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ellisv
It seems to me that they can do repeated measures (coinciding with updating
street view). I'm more interested in how this will account for the fact that
the monitor is on a car which is itself a source of pollution, no?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Who that car is following and how long the spend sitting at red lights (or in
traffic leaving a light) would likely have a larger effect. If you have enough
data points you can reliably correct for it but there's still gonna be
exception cases like the industrial area that's polluted during the day and
the adjacent down that the wind blows the pollution to at night (Google
doesn't drive street view cars at night AFAIK).

I don't know how much Google takes season into account when routing street
view cars but areas with a tourism industry would be cleaner in the off season
and colder areas will be dirtier in the winter (more fuel used for heating,
less trees). Also something that could be accounted for...

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x5n1
Now we're getting to SimCity level of coolness.

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pingec
Great. But I think Google will not show up where I live in a while so where
can one buy these Aclima sensors?

Also I hope they expand measurements to other parameters like particle
pollution.

Monitoring pollution is a taboo topic in our city because it would show that
the port pollutes a lot and of course money is more important than public
health.

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SEJeff
The article mentioned they are measuring particulates. That is exactly what
you're hoping they expand, so good news! They already will be measuring that.

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PointerReaper
I hope they find a way to add this to a portable device for end users. Here in
DC I've suspected the air in the metro stations (underground train) is many
times worse than the above ground sampling.

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skatenerd
Possibly unrelated, but if you are interested in the geography of Chinese air
pollution, check out aqicn.org

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comrade1
Why not just, I don't know, install a permanent sensor. This doesn't seem very
useful unless these cars are driving the same route every day.

~~~
IanCal
Well, there are a few reasons here.

1\. Installing a permanent sensor means ensuring some power source

2\. Any kind of planning / permissions needed to sort it out

3\. They're fixed

The first two simply aren't problems if you whack them on a car. No approval
needed, no lengthy agreements about the look & impact of placing them around.

Three is really important. While the same money spent on fixed sensors gives
greater time resolution, it'll give worse spatial resolution. Is it worth
sticking a permanent sensor down to find out that actually the pollution
levels never get high enough to be a problem? How many side-roads will get
covered?

> This doesn't seem very useful

A huge amount of spatially dense readings across cities? That doesn't seem
like it might be useful to you?

~~~
comrade1
How often does a google car go past a location? I always assumed it was less
than once a year based on how often they update street view where I live.

Plus, you have no idea what time of day the car will be passing through a
location.

So you can't compare the data points over time - they're not taken the same
time of day. And I'm not sure if you can even compare different regions - your
data may tell you that one part of the city has cleaner air than another, but
it's only because one part of the city was measured in the morning and another
part of the city in the afternoon.

~~~
IanCal
> Plus, you have no idea what time of day the car will be passing through a
> location.

I don't, but I assume google does.

> So you can't compare the data points over time - they're not taken the same
> time of day

Not in a simple way, no. But to say it doesn't provide useful information
seems odd when the article says

> Independent scientific analysis confirmed that the mobile sensor system
> worked for collecting street-by-street data, and could improve upon the
> regional network of sensors operated by the Environmental Protection Agency.

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comrade1
How do you read that quote as a positive thing? The first half merely says it
was successful in collecting data and the second half uses weasel words "could
improve".

I've worked on projects in the past where we collected a ton of data like
this, gave it to some poor graduate student or post-doc to do a bunch of data
wanking with it, only to produce throw-away papers in bad journals because
even. Though it was a huge amount of data it wasn't good data.

