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Urban Data

Urban Data was built in Guatemala City in April 2014, during the International Space Apps Challenge, for the Cool it! challenge. A team proposed a mesh of sensors so the city could see its own heat, and a public map of those observations.

Guatemala City named it Best Mission Concept. The awards page then listed it among the global finalists in that category.

The project

What the project proposed

The project set out to build a mesh of sensors for cities: mesh networks, a Raspberry Pi, and sensors, to detect urban microclimates, heatwaves, and pollution. The challenge page says it measured temperature, GPS position, humidity, atmospheric pressure, and O2 and CO2.

The 2014 website described an Urban-Box: a Raspberry Pi, an SD card, GPS, wifi, sensors for temperature, pressure, humidity, and noise, a solar panel, and a battery. It said CO2 and light sensors could be added, and that a rural deployment would use a mesh. Phones and other boards were named as further sources.

Diagram of a Raspberry Pi connected to temperature, humidity, and pressure sensors, a battery and solar panel, and a cloud.
Diagram from the 2014 site.
Diagram of green sensor nodes linked through a cloud to a server, a phone, and several screens.
Diagram from the 2014 pitch deck.

What the programs do

On the Raspberry Pi it reads a DS18B20 temperature sensor and a BMP085, which reports temperature, pressure, and altitude, and posts those readings as a GeoJSON point.

A second script posts example points around Guatemala City, with sample data for temperature, humidity, UV, sunlight, noise, and CO2. Measurements were collected locally during the event.

A blue box printed with the Urban Data mark, a solar panel leaning on its lid, on a green cloth.
The Urban-Box, from the 2014 pitch deck.
A Raspberry Pi and sensor boards lifted out of the Urban-Box, with a breadboard and colored wires.
The node opened, from the 2014 pitch deck.
A small sensor stack with an antenna and two solar panels on concrete.
The node with its solar panels, 16 April 2014.
Map of Guatemala City with a temperature heat layer and the Urban Data mark in the corner.
The 2014 map, temperature layer. Screenshot from the pitch deck.
The same Guatemala City map with the noise layer selected, shown as red and yellow patches.
The same map with the noise layer selected.

The outcome

Space Apps published two results for Urban Data. The global category was won by another team.

Published results for Urban Data at Space Apps 2014
Place Published result
Guatemala City Best Mission Concept. The local award, and the nomination sent on to global judging.
Global finalists Urban Data, one of five projects listed in that category.
Global winner Aurora Wearables: Fashion meets Function, from Exeter.

NASA’s announcement dates the international event to April 11–12, 2014, at 95 locations. In Guatemala City it was hosted by Campus Tecnológico and Universidad del Valle.

The team named on the local pitch deck is Jorge Ballsels, Sebastian Oliva, Victor Lopez, Victor Rodriguez, Astrid Villatoro, and Guillermo Ambrosio.

Open data

A city holds heat differently from the countryside around it. Pavement and roofs store it, streets slow the wind, and engines and machines add more. The people who live with that heat are the ones closest to it. Seeing it means measuring it in the city, not only at a distant station.

A hazy city skyline in warm light, towers in silhouette and a pale plume among the foreground trees.
Photograph from the 2014 pitch deck. tian2992, CC BY-SA 2.0

Urban Data’s proposal was to post those measurements where anyone could read them. A GeoJSON point can be read without joining the team: a place, a time, a temperature. The 2014 site said the project was open-source software and hardware. That is the public good in the work. A city’s heat is a shared condition, and a shared condition needs a record anyone can open.

The license notices do not agree. The LICENSE file and the README in github.com/urbandata/urban-data say GNU GPL version 3. The API settings file says Apache 2. The Space Apps project page says Apache License 2.0. This page does not decide which notice governs.

What was built after 2014 is not written here.

Sources

The record above is drawn from these pages. Each one opens outside this site.