Smart Cities

As I was walking around campus on Wednesday and checking out the mess in the robotics lab I noticed there was a Smart Cities conference taking place in the Photonics Center. To quote the article by Rich Barlow

“Wouldn’t it be nice if communicating “smart” lights could sense when there’s no oncoming traffic and wa

ve you through, the College of Engineering professor mused to a packed house attending

Boston rush hour traffic, IBM Smarter Cities grant, global warming, climate change, greenhouse gas emission

Wednesday’s Smarter Cities conference at t

he Photonics Center. That dream could be realized someday by the nascent technologies Boston and other cities are pioneering to collect, analyze, and act on data such as traffic counts, according to Cassandras and other speakers.”

I seem to remember that our Junior Science Seminar toured Professor Hutyra’s lab recently, who is doing a lot of work with combating gridlock in the city and we had one BUA senior do their senior research with her.  Another lab we often visit and who moderated a panel at this event was Nathan Phillips.  He is responsible for putting CO2 sensors on the roofs of several buildings in the city and out in Harvard forest.  We have had several BUA students do their senior research with professor Phillips which sometimes involves field trips to Harvard forest.  Hey, who doesn’t enjoy climbing trees!