Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Crowd-Tracking Noise and Air Pollution
At the recent Health Horizons conference, we talked about the future of Crowdsourced Research, especially when it comes to environmental issues. We gave the example of Asthmapolis - GPS sensors tacked onto inhalers that measure where and when people are using them.
It turns out a project in France is doing something similar.
In May 2009, some residents of Paris were given La Montre Verte ("The Green Watch"). The watch is actually a watch, and it also has two sensors to detect noise levels and ozone levels, a GPS chip, and a Bluetooth chip.
As people went about their day, the watch recorded the noise and ozone in their environment. The data was transferred to a companion mobile phone application, regularly uploaded to a central server, and crunched into pollution maps.
The project website, in French, explains future plans: "The objective is to multiply by 100 or 1000 the number of environmental sensors and involve citizens in environmental measurement... With partners in UK, Netherlands, Belgian, Swiss and French, the "Green Watch" will soon be deploying large-scale experiments in Manchester, Amsterdam, Geneva and Paris."
It's a great example of people combining self-tracking data for a greater understanding of how we collectively impact each other.
What if more kinds of self-tracking data were aggregated and analyzed? Wouldn't the new insights and awareness coming out of these collectives have the potential to massively increase our well-being? As long as privacy is not compromised, I don't really see a downside to this increased awareness.