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Finding a Parking Space Online
Street-embedded sensors monitor parking availability
San Francisco will implement the largest mesh network for monitoring parking to date. Around 6,000 wireless sensors from the San Francisco company Streetline will be fixed alongside as many parking spots, monitoring both parking availability and the volume and speed of passing traffic. The city hopes that displaying information from the sensors on Web maps, smart phones, and signs on the street will reduce the traffic and pollution caused by circling cars.
A mesh network differs from a typical wireless network in that there's no central transmitter: every node can transmit to every other node. Mesh networks have generally been used for environmental monitoring, or to grant wireless devices Internet access.
In San Francisco clusters of plastic-encased, networked sensors are embedded in the surface of the street. The main sensor in the cluster, which is commonly used to detect cars, is a magnetic one. Magnetic sensors detect when a large metal object locally disrupts Earth's magnetic field.
The sensors in Streetline's monitoring system don't have any wires, which makes installation cheaper and easier than tearing up roads to put down cables. The vehicle sensors look like pavement reflectors, and cities can simply glue them down to the street and have a working system almost instantly. Every four to six blocks is a wired receiver-usually on a lamppost-that relays the sensor data to a central server.
Another aspect of the network is that each additional node-such as the ones that the city plans to add to parking meters to allow for remote meter paying-improves the system. Streetline plans to offer a wide range of services using the same network, including sensors to measure air pollution and ambient noise levels and monitors for street lighting and water systems.
Grifantini, Kristina, MIT Technology Review July 24, 2008. http://www.technologyreview.com/web/21123/page1/
Opportunity: Saved time and reduced pollution when cars find a parking space easily
Threat: The system gives an incentive to use the car instead of a bike or public transport
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