smartercities: Application development using IBM’s Smart Water SDK | SmarterWater Apple revolutionized the consumer world with their iPhone/iPad app store providing developers with access to the iOS platform and allowed them to build their own applications. Apple also provided an App Store where application developer could advertise and sell the applications. The Smarter Water platform now follows this model but instead of targeting customers, it targets a range of 3rd party water applications developers from research groups (including universities), services provider and partners, to developer their own smarter water applications.

smartercities:

Application development using IBM’s Smart Water SDK | SmarterWater

Apple revolutionized the consumer world with their iPhone/iPad app store providing developers with access to the iOS platform and allowed them to build their own applications. Apple also provided an App Store where application developer could advertise and sell the applications. The Smarter Water platform now follows this model but instead of targeting customers, it targets a range of 3rd party water applications developers from research groups (including universities), services provider and partners, to developer their own smarter water applications.

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City Forward: An Award-Winning Lesson in the Use of Open Big Data | Citizen IBM Blog

Sponsored by IBM, the City Forward website can be used to compare a selected city’s characteristics and challenges to others around the world. In the process, users can identify trends, pinpoint similarities and get ideas for how a city may be improved. These city stories then can be shared and discussed within the City Forward Community.

Completely free of charge, City Forward connects to the work done by Smarter Cities Challenge teams around the world. The website provides data for more than 100 cities, and offers both city leaders and the public the unique ability to consolidate multiple data sources. The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) recently recognized City Forward with its 2013 Corporate Social Responsibility Webby Award.

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 Collaborative Platforms Empower Citizens To Shape Their Communities [My Ideal City] - PSFK Participatory online platforms and visual tools are lowering the barriers to participation and empowering citizens to design their communities. These crowd planning systems facilitate an open dialogue between city agencies and the people they serve, establishing a structured process for collaboration and encouraging a higher level of participation at the civic level. By seeking input throughout the development process, these crowd-planned systems help ensure greater transparency and buy-in that ultimately results in an end solution that meets the actual needs of the population. Winka Dubbeldam, celebrated architect and principal of Archi-Tectonics, has most recently lent her expertise to a crowdsourced plan to revitalize Bogota, Colombia called MyIdealCity. She told PSFK.com that the future of urban planning is in crowd planning: Initiatives of governing institutions that tap into the local intelligence will greatly enhance the public’s participation, and will help get a much more direct , real-time response that can adjust to the new directions of peoples’ needs. This demands an understanding of the word intelligence in the wider sense and a real commitment of the governing bodies in actually giving immediate feedback, and executing all.

 Collaborative Platforms Empower Citizens To Shape Their Communities [My Ideal City] - PSFK

Participatory online platforms and visual tools are lowering the barriers to participation and empowering citizens to design their communities. These crowd planning systems facilitate an open dialogue between city agencies and the people they serve, establishing a structured process for collaboration and encouraging a higher level of participation at the civic level. By seeking input throughout the development process, these crowd-planned systems help ensure greater transparency and buy-in that ultimately results in an end solution that meets the actual needs of the population.

Winka Dubbeldam, celebrated architect and principal of Archi-Tectonics, has most recently lent her expertise to a crowdsourced plan to revitalize Bogota, Colombia called MyIdealCity. She told PSFK.com that the future of urban planning is in crowd planning:

Initiatives of governing institutions that tap into the local intelligence will greatly enhance the public’s participation, and will help get a much more direct , real-time response that can adjust to the new directions of peoples’ needs. This demands an understanding of the word intelligence in the wider sense and a real commitment of the governing bodies in actually giving immediate feedback, and executing all.

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Santander: Test bed for smart cities and open data policies | SmartPlanet To support SmartSantander ambitions, the city is deploying more than 10,000 sensors to monitor everything from garbage collection to crime to air quality. Libelium, a Spanish startup, has contributed around 1,000 sensor nodes, which monitor available street parking (see sensor embedded in street, in image above), collect air quality data and manage street lighting for better energy efficiency.

Santander: Test bed for smart cities and open data policies | SmartPlanet

To support SmartSantander ambitions, the city is deploying more than 10,000 sensors to monitor everything from garbage collection to crime to air quality. Libelium, a Spanish startup, has contributed around 1,000 sensor nodes, which monitor available street parking (see sensor embedded in street, in image above), collect air quality data and manage street lighting for better energy efficiency.

(via smartercities)

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The technological advances transforming “Edison’s 130-year-old industry” promise to revolutionize the way light is integrated in our homes, workplaces, and cities.

As “the last industrial-age analog technology” is digitized, Felicity Barringer looks at “the fundamental rethinking of lighting now under way in research labs, executive offices and investor conferences.”

“Innovations on the horizon range from smart lampposts that can sense gas hazards to lights harnessed for office productivity or even to cure jet lag. Digital lighting based on light-emitting diodes — LEDs — offers the opportunity to flit beams delicately across stages like the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge — creating a light sculpture more elegant than the garish marketers’ light shows on display in Times Square, Piccadilly Circus and the Shibuya district in Tokyo.”

She explains other possible applications, such as lampposts that function as “nodes in a smart network that illuminate spaces, visually monitor them, sense heat and communicate with other nodes and human monitors.”

“James Highgate, an expert on the new technology who runs an annual LED industry conference, sees a transition period ahead ‘for the next three to five years, until the eight billion sockets in the U.S. get filled’ with LEDs. ‘Some people will never change,’ he added. ‘They’ll be in the alleys buying 100-watt incandescents.’”

”

Lighting Revolution Produces Radiant Visions of Our Future | Planetizen

Full Story: New Technology Inspires a Rethinking of Light
Published on Wednesday, April 24, 2013 in The New York Times

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The Crazy Accurate Thermal Images That Saw Dzokhar Tsarnaev Through a Boat Tarp There was no small amount of technology that went into the capture of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev, but perhaps none was more impressive than the helicopter-mounted, forward-looking infrared camera that confirmed once and for all that there was someone hiding in a boat in Watertown, Massachusetts. And that he was almost certainly Dzokhar Tsarnaev. Here are the pictures that sky-high camera took, just released a few hours ago by the Massachusetts State Police. They’re incredible. The shot above gives the cleanest look taken by state police’s Air Wing, after being tipped off by the boat’s owner that there was a man smeared with blood (Tsarnaev) hiding inside. You can see Tsarnaev’s legs extended almost to the wheel, and his right arm outstretched. The boat itself looks almost like an X-ray. And that’s no surprise, given the capabilities of the technology involved. As we wrote last night, forward-looking infrared (FLIR) cameras are equipped with special sensors that can detect infrared radiation, such as that caused by a heat source. Specifically, in this case, caused by a heat source belonging to a human body.

The Crazy Accurate Thermal Images That Saw Dzokhar Tsarnaev Through a Boat Tarp

There was no small amount of technology that went into the capture of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev, but perhaps none was more impressive than the helicopter-mounted, forward-looking infrared camera that confirmed once and for all that there was someone hiding in a boat in Watertown, Massachusetts. And that he was almost certainly Dzokhar Tsarnaev.

Here are the pictures that sky-high camera took, just released a few hours ago by the Massachusetts State Police. They’re incredible.

The shot above gives the cleanest look taken by state police’s Air Wing, after being tipped off by the boat’s owner that there was a man smeared with blood (Tsarnaev) hiding inside. You can see Tsarnaev’s legs extended almost to the wheel, and his right arm outstretched. The boat itself looks almost like an X-ray. And that’s no surprise, given the capabilities of the technology involved. As we wrote last night, forward-looking infrared (FLIR) cameras are equipped with special sensors that can detect infrared radiation, such as that caused by a heat source. Specifically, in this case, caused by a heat source belonging to a human body.

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Facial Recognition Tech Could Help Identify the FBI Identity Suspects | MIT Technology Review The FBI could use software to help identify suspects, and more advanced techniques are around the corner. The FBI appealed to the public Thursday for help identifying two men shown in pixilated photos and video footage who are suspected of involvement in Monday’s bomb attacks in Boston. Experts say the FBI may be able to use other images from the scene—together with facial recognition software—to search through identity databases. The approach is likely to become more common in the future as new technology makes using facial recognition on surveillance and bystander imagery more reliable. Deploying facial recognition software in the Boston investigation isn’t straightforward because the images available are very different from the evenly lit, frontal, passport-style photos stored in law enforcement databases. Such mug shots can be matched with about 99 percent accuracy, says Anil Jain, a professor at Michigan State expert who works on facial recognition, a figure that falls to about 50 percent for images of good quality but with added complications such as a person wearing a hat or glasses.

Facial Recognition Tech Could Help Identify the FBI Identity Suspects | MIT Technology Review

The FBI could use software to help identify suspects, and more advanced techniques are around the corner.

The FBI appealed to the public Thursday for help identifying two men shown in pixilated photos and video footage who are suspected of involvement in Monday’s bomb attacks in Boston.

Experts say the FBI may be able to use other images from the scene—together with facial recognition software—to search through identity databases. The approach is likely to become more common in the future as new technology makes using facial recognition on surveillance and bystander imagery more reliable.

Deploying facial recognition software in the Boston investigation isn’t straightforward because the images available are very different from the evenly lit, frontal, passport-style photos stored in law enforcement databases. Such mug shots can be matched with about 99 percent accuracy, says Anil Jain, a professor at Michigan State expert who works on facial recognition, a figure that falls to about 50 percent for images of good quality but with added complications such as a person wearing a hat or glasses.

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Pacific Island Trials Aquaponics for Food Supply. Will Cities be Next? | This Big City Aquaponics could hold the answer to food supply for islands in the Pacific. Many lack suitable soil for growing crops, have limited freshwater, and struggle to import fresh produce because of rising fuel costs. Moreover, a recent study by the marine conservation and advocacy group Oceana named the Cook Islands the country most at risk of food insecurity through ocean acidification, which threatens its fish stocks. Now, Rarotonga, the largest of the Cook Islands, is trialling a new aquaponic farm which combines aquaculture (raising fish in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants without soil) in symbiosis. In this carbon-neutral ‘closed-loop’ system, nitrate-rich water from the fish tanks irrigate vegetables in nearby beds. The fish waste nourishes the plants; they in turn filter and oxygenate the water before it returns to the tanks. No herbicides, pesticides or hormones are used, and the system uses just 10% of the water required by traditional agriculture.

Pacific Island Trials Aquaponics for Food Supply. Will Cities be Next? | This Big City

Aquaponics could hold the answer to food supply for islands in the Pacific. Many lack suitable soil for growing crops, have limited freshwater, and struggle to import fresh produce because of rising fuel costs. Moreover, a recent study by the marine conservation and advocacy group Oceana named the Cook Islands the country most at risk of food insecurity through ocean acidification, which threatens its fish stocks.

Now, Rarotonga, the largest of the Cook Islands, is trialling a new aquaponic farm which combines aquaculture (raising fish in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants without soil) in symbiosis. In this carbon-neutral ‘closed-loop’ system, nitrate-rich water from the fish tanks irrigate vegetables in nearby beds. The fish waste nourishes the plants; they in turn filter and oxygenate the water before it returns to the tanks. No herbicides, pesticides or hormones are used, and the system uses just 10% of the water required by traditional agriculture.

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