NFPA Journal - May/June 2017 - 17

DOT MATRIX For its Hubcab project, the Senseable City Lab analyzed data from more than 150 million taxi rides in a year in New York City
and discovered ways to dramatically reduce traffic. The zoom-in detail shows individual pick-ups (yellow dots) and drop-offs (blue dots).

apply this algorithm, this model, to any
city around the world with a few basic
inputs. We don't even need the cab data
to determine the shareability of rides
in any city around the world, which is
very exciting.

What do these results mean?
This incredible capacity to share trips
could have major implications for
congestion in New York. Decreasing
the traffic in the city could have major
implications for companies such as
FedEx, as well as first responders who
rely on the fluidity of the streets for the
success of their professions.

SENSEABLE CIT Y LAB

What's another exciting project?
We're engaged in a project called Sensing Lights, where we have capitalized on
the preexisting, ubiquitous infrastructure of street lights to embed sensor
systems that allow us to detect things
like air pollution, flows of people, traffic, etc. By overlaying three data sets
from regular vision cameras, thermal
cameras, and air pollution sensors,
we've determined a way to optimize the

traffic-light cycle for the city of Cambridge, [Massachusetts]. We focused on
a specific intersection in Cambridge-a
particularly dangerous intersection.
By installing these sensors and monitoring the flow of traffic, the flow of
people, and the air quality, we were able
to tell the city of Cambridge that they
should change their traffic-light cycle
from about 37 seconds to 43 seconds to
increase the input of vehicles and people
and decrease the pollution that people
are exposed to at that intersection.

Why should first responders care
about the work the lab's doing?
The fact that there are currently close
to 50 billion connected devices worldwide, such as sensors and other things
that are connected to the Internet,
allows all organizations an opportunity
to understand their systems better-for
example, to understand a building and
its infrastructure and the integrity of

nfpa.org/dispatches
LISTEN to audio from the NFPA Journal
interview with Erin Baumgartner.

that infrastructure and when it is likely
to fail. That should be very interesting
to the fire service. Also, thinking about
things like traffic cycles, if you're trying
to respond to a fire in New York City
and traffic is moving at 4 mph, that's a
problem. But if you can find a way to
optimize the system and remove the
cars by sharing rides, that matters for
the fluidity of the city and it certainly
matters for police and fire and EMS.

What do you hope people take
away from your talk at C&E?
The visuals we provide and the storytelling can be very lively and exciting. I'm
hoping that we leave people with something to think about-a new glimpse
into the future of our shared urban environment-and something they want to
share with other folks. I may talk about
some of the things I've just mentioned,
but our work changes so quickly and we
have so many projects going on. There
may be other things that we currently
have in the works that may come to a
results phase later in the spring that I'll
cover at C&E.
N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - May/June 2017