MIRTHE, Sensor Networks, and TED

This week I’ve been doing a lot of work on environmental monitoring, when I came across a series of videos from the recent TED Conference. One video I found particularly interesting was the following:

http://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_proclaims_4_environmental_heresies.html

Steward Brand, author of The Earth Catalog, speaks on the ways humanity is changing. Most interesting was his discussion on the rapid process of urbanization where 1.4 million people per week leave the agrarian lifestyle and move to cities to inhabit the shantytowns.

There are many problems with the new urban lifestyle. Human wastes, trash, crime and vice are all some of the darker sides of the new urban lifestyle. However, for better or for worse, at this point 1 billion people currently inhabit these improvised communities outside the cities, and this number is growing at a rapid rate.

Of course, as this is the MIRTHE Roadmapping Blog, I continue to ask “what does this mean for MIRTHE?”

MIRTHE is developing the tools to understand urban air pollution, as well as what environmental factors mean for pollution and air toxicity. Chemicals are virtually everywhere in our lives, and yet in many cases we lack a fundamental understanding of how they interact with our bodies and our environment. Urbanization and the increase in population density means many more people will be exposed to the same toxins in the same area; without an understanding of how civilization interacts with the environment, governments and urban planners will struggle to make their cities cleaner, healthier, and less toxic for its inhabitants.

Sensor networks are a very interesting possibility for this research. By distributing a network of sensors to detect for common pollutants like ozone, N2O or NOx, scientists could better understand how cities produce, recycle and transform the wastes they create. With this knowledge, contemporary cities could be re-imagined new cities could be designed. However, there is the first step to making and distributing these sensors.

For this reason, I am putting a strong emphasis within the MIRTHE Roadmap to build and deploy sensor networks. I believe once demonstrations have occurred, government organizations and scientists will see the benefit of such an endeavor, and begin constructing networks of their own. But, it has to start somewhere.