Emerging Technologies Offer New Ways To Look At Cities

23 August 2006 - 12:00pm

Rapidly advancing web technologies are enabling planners to merge location and data like never before. UCLA's Jeff Burke explains how embedded sensors, 'mash-ups,' and a host of other technologies are helping planners and everyday citizens alike.

"What we find extremely intriguing involves the combination of several technologies: positioning technologies like GPS; Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which enable the mapping of spatial information from GPS and other location-based systems; and finally sensor networks that observe physical environments and contribute those observations to large-scale data sets."

"An everyday example of a sensing device is a cell phone, which can capture images and sound, and often has both positioning capability and a connection to the internet. We are interested in thinking about these not as just phones but as data-capture devices and tools to participate in documenting our cities."

Source: The Planning Report, August 21, 2006
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