Catalyst Awards

The World Health Organization estimates that 9 out of 10 people in the world breathes polluted air, leading to 7 million premature deaths per year. Today’s stationary air quality monitors are expensive, offer limited coverage, and provide low-resolution data. To address these limitations, Aclima developed a mobile sensor-based state-of-the-art machine learning and detection technology that provides hyper-local air quality mapping at a lower cost than traditional approaches and with an increase in spatial resolution. This technology delivers air pollution and climate emissions intelligence at unprecedented block-by-block resolution and empowers governments, companies, researchers, and the public to reduce emissions and protect public health, at the local and global level. Aclima aims to deliver hyperlocal air quality data and insights to over 1 billion people around the world within the next five years.

The frequency of extreme heat waves is growing, claiming more lives than all other natural disasters combined. In response, CAPA Strategies, a global climate consultancy, created the Urban Heat Watch program, which aims to engage community members in understanding how temperatures vary across regions. These heat campaigns use recycled and reusable 3D printed sensors mounted on cars or bicycles and an online toolkit, which provide community participants with access to state-of-the-art equipment and verified processes to create high resolution descriptions of heat in their select regions. The open-source electronic boards contain sensors that collect temperature and humidity readings every second, and participants conduct campaigns at three times throughout the day. The analysis, which also uses open source software, takes two weeks, and results in process for engaging communities in interpreting the reasons for the distribution of heat. Participants then engage with local planners, public health practitioners, and others to identify opportunities for expanding green infrastructure, cooling services, energy system investments, and other strategies for reducing effects from extreme heat. Since 2015, nine U.S. cities have already conducted campaigns, with another 15 in 2019, and expectations to work with more than 30 cities by 2020. With support from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, CAPA will be soliciting applications for their next heat campaign in January 2020.

Human Oriented Products Ubiquitous (HOPU) created Smart Spot, a sensor and data powered tool with dashboard and decision support functionality based on artificial intelligence algorithms, to support technicians and urban planners in considering sustainability, climate change, air quality and human-centric indicators in their decision-making processes. Smart Spot utilizes HOPU’s own manufactured sensors and IoT devices to collect air pollution data at specific points in real time. The data is scrubbed by HOPU’s machine learning algorithms to improve the precision of the sensor measurements and is then converted into human-relevant indicators that can be used as part of the socio-economic evaluation for a project or investment. Smart Spot is already helping cities such as Cartagena, Madrid, Bruges, and Helsinki, to create climate change action plans.

City of Portland’s Smart City PDX team designed a low-cost air quality sensor testing project in response to community requests for more information about local air quality. Most air quality sensor projects are focused on assessing sensor limitations and data quality, and this Smart City PDX project used methods to address both technology and sustainability considerations. Smart City PDX included procurement criteria focused on the ability to upgrade and modify a sensor device with the intent to minimize electronics waste. These criteria directly influenced Apis, Inc. to design a low-cost air quality sensor device with a modular sensor socket design. This design led to less electronics waste, as well as less hazardous solid and liquid waste. Smart City PDX and any other interested municipality can easily adapt these criteria for scaled-up projects and a variety of sensor devices beyond air quality.

Dubai has set a unique goal to be the most technologically innovative, environmentally sustainable, and happiest city on Earth. To achieve this goal, United Arab Emirates’ telecom provider du Telecom entered into a 5-year partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to create the Smart Dubai Platform. Together, HPE and du Telecom are making sense of 2.5 billion GB of new data created every day by 1,000 e-services, 26 government departments, and 250,000 smart meters. Sensors with feedback mechanisms have been placed throughout the city, allowing city officials to gain insights into which systems are working well, which are not, and how the city can evolve to better serve its citizens. By leveraging this data, The Smart Dubai initiative increased public happiness levels to 90% in just 11 months. Dubai is sharing its story with a variety of international smart city stakeholder groups to inspire similar efforts across the globe.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) worked with leading information and communications technology experts to develop recommendations that support cities in developing open and interoperable smart city platforms (SCP). Recommendations ITU-T Y.4201 and ITU-T Y.4200 provide the blueprint of an open and interoperable SCP that can address a wide-range of city challenges, such as urban sensing, infrastructure management, climate change, and citizen-centered integrated services. These recommendations help cities to circulate data collected by different sensor networks and translate them into actionable insights that support city stakeholders in making better decisions. Cities in China and Spain have already implemented the recommendations with success, and several other cities across the globe are in the process of implementing the standards.