Noise Pollution Mapped using Crowdsourced Data Collected by Smartphone App

As reported by Wired UK: The main causes of noise pollution -- machines, transportation, poor urban planning, people -- vary considerably in terms of location and intensity throughout the year. Consequently, measuring these noise levels on a large scale is often a time consuming and sometimes inaccurate procedure.

However, Rajib Rana, Chun Tung Chou, Nirupama Bulusu, Salil Kanhere and Wen Hu at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, have devised a novel way of combating many of the problems that have hindered previous methods of monitoring noise in the past. Rather than spending thousands on equipment, Rana and his team have crowdsourced the data from smartphones -- they call it the "Ear-Phone".

The average smartphone has enough sophisticated technology (on-board microphones, GPS, time stamping) to make it an extraordinary mobile monitoring device. However, the implementation of the Ear-Phone came with its own set of challenges -- there are many ambient noises picked up by a smartphone that would be of no use to the researchers, namely intimate conversations that sound loud to the phone, but wouldn't be disruptive to passersby, as well as the sound of rustling clothes, or keys or money jingling in pockets.

The team at CSIRO isolated these problems and fixed them accordingly, programming the phone to recognize a conversation, wait until it was over, and then start recording again. They also made sure the GPS was only collecting data when outdoors and while being held in the user's hand.  

This was made possible by taking advantage of the automatic proximity sensors and accelerometers that are standard in most smartphones. These sensors generate specific feedback when the phone is handled, which the software developed by Rana and his team can then use to assess whether or not it's an appropriate time to take a reading. Using this method, handheld usage can be detected with an accuracy of 84 percent.

Once all of the criteria have been met, the phone will take a sound recording, complete with exact location and time. The data is then sent to a central server the moment the phone is connected to Wi-Fi.

The only major downside with the crowdsourced method is battery life -- always-on GPS and Wi-Fi can drain a phone's power in a matter of hours, but the team claims it is working on a solution.

Noise pollution is thought to be a particularly destructive environmental hazard. Not only can it cause hearing-loss, stress and tinnitus in humans, but it's devastating to local Wildlife, reducing livable habitats, disrupting predator or prey detection and avoidance, and even causing infidelity in finches.

The Ear-Phone has been tested on various Android and Nokia phones in Australia.

NASA Has a 622 Mbps Data Connection to the Moon

As reported by Gismodo UK: NASA has smashed its record for transmitting data to and from the moon. Now, it boasts a frankly amazing 622Mbps transfer speed to the rock that circles our little planet.

The Agency is able to achieve that using lasers—instead of radio waves—to transmit data between its ground station in New Mexico and a spacecraft that’s orbiting the moon, 239,000 miles away. Part of the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration, the agency was also able to upload error-free data to the LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer) spacecraft at a rate of 20Mbps.

It beats previous attempts to send data through space using similar techniques, in particular one earlier this year which saw NASA beam the Mona Lisa into space at a rather paltry 300 bits per second. The new success of the LLCD marks a major milestone in space communications: NASA has previously relied on radio frequency data links, but they’re not able to carry the quantities of data that the agency will require in the future.

So, while the LLC is currently a proof of concept, it’s hoped it will see real service soon. “We are encouraged by the results of the demonstration to this point, and we are confident we are on the right path to introduce this new capability into operational service soon,” explained Badri Younes, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation. And frankly, when Internet on the moon is faster than some home connections, you know the future had arrived.

Federal Court of Appeals Says Police Need a Warrant to Track Vehicles via GPS

The Supreme Court ruled that attaching a GPS unit to a vehicle
constituted a 'search', but not if that search generally required
a probable cause warrant.

As reported by the Washington Post: A federal appeals court in Philadelphia ruled Tuesday that the government must obtain a warrant to attach a GPS unit to a car.

The case involved alleged pharmacy burglaries in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland: the authorities suspected a trio of brothers and slapped a magnetic GPS unit to one of their vehicles after consulting the U.S. Attorney's office -- but without obtaining a warrant. Using the evidence gathered from the device, the vehicle was tracked to a recently burglarized RiteAid. Police stopped the brothers shortly afterward, and a search allegedly revealed items from the RiteAid. In the resulting case, U.S. v. Katzin, the brothers argued that the evidence obtained as a result of the GPS unit should be inadmissible because the police had not obtained a warrant.

The District Court agreed with the brothers, and the government appealed the case to the Court of Appeals for the Third District. On Tuesday, a three-judge panel upheld the lower court's ruling, finding that the actions of the police were "highly disconcerting" under a physical intrusion theory of the Fourth Amendment. The judges dismissed the government's arguments that the search was legal because the police had probable cause even if they didn't seek a warrant, saying "generally speaking, a warrantless search is not rendered reasonable merely because probable cause existed that would have justified the issuance of a warrant."

That's important because it extends a recent Supreme Court ruling, which found that GPS tracking constituted a search but did not rule on whether it's reasonable to conduct such a search without a warrant. This week's ruling is the first time a federal appeals court has ruled since that landmark decision.

The appeals court also rejected a government argument that a GPS search might qualify for the automobile exception, in which police have greater leeway searching through vehicles. "A GPS search," the court found, "extends the police intrusion well past the time it would normally take officers to enter a target vehicle and locate, extract, or examine the then-existing evidence."

American Civil Liberties Union Staff Attorney Catherine Crump, who had argued before the panel, called the decision "a victory for all Americans because it ensures that the police cannot use powerful tracking technology without court supervision and a good reason to believe it will turn up evidence of wrongdoing," in a statement. A request for comment from the U.S. Attorney's Office which argued the appeal was not returned.

A Tentative Step Toward Intelligent Highways: Bluetooth Detection In Vehicles Helps Crowdsource Traffic Flow

As reported by the Columbian: If you want to improve your travel time along some of Clark County’s busier roads, turn your Bluetooth device to “discoverable” mode.

Clark County traffic engineers — along with engineers from the State of Washington and the city of Vancouver — have in place a system that can detect Bluetooth devices in discoverable mode.

The program is being funded primarily through a $540,000 federal grant, with a small match from the local governments.

And with some 900 vehicles traveling through the Andresen corridor during peak travel times, even a small sampling is enough to give information on how quickly cars are moving along the roadways.

“Right now, we are seeing between 3 and 5 percent of traffic broadcasting in discoverable mode,” said Rob Klug, traffic signal operations and engineering lead at Clark County. “From that, we can track MAC addresses and ... get a timestamp of when cars enter and exit the area we are scanning. From there, the next step, we can make traffic signal settings based on (the information).”

Klug explained the process from an interior office at the Clark County Public Service Center. Large computer screens blink out traffic data and display live footage from intersection cameras. When something traffic-related in Clark County breaks, this office is where it starts to get fixed. At times, Klug will run signals manually from his computer to unclog congested areas.

He receives immediate reports from an automated system when cars start to back up beyond expectations.

Klug can talk at length about traffic philosophy and methodology, and he can recommend a few books to read if you’re really interested in how traffic systems have evolved over the years.

But before he explained how this Bluetooth system is being implemented, he stopped for a moment.

“It sounds kind of like Big Brother, right?” Klug said.

The fact of the matter is Bluetooth devices are most commonly used in connection with cellular phones. And it can sound, perhaps, a bit creepy that your local government can see those devices.

Because of that, Klug made it a point to make sure the county wouldn’t end up in a strange spot from day one.

Every Bluetooth device comes with a unique address to identify it. The system that tracks those addresses strips about half of the address off before tracking them. Further, if the system finds a device that isn’t moving through the corridor, it quits tracking it.

The system can’t listen in on your conversations, either.

And if some agency were trying to find a certain device for whatever reason, the county wouldn’t be able to help out.

“We don’t have any way of tracking like that,” Klug said.

And the bottom line is, if you don’t want the system to find your device, simply turn off discoverable mode.

“You can turn it off and just not participate,” Klug said. “But if you want travel times to improve, well, leave it on.”

Bob Hart, project manager at the Regional Transportation Council, is assisting with linking the Bluetooth program between the state, county and city. He said the hope is that enough information will be available by spring 2014 for the agencies to start tweaking traffic signal times.

“The reason for having the pilot project is we want to know if enhanced information can help us make the corridor work better,” Hart said. 

“We’re testing it now to see if the project is going to give us the information we want. The next part will be if the information can improve the corridor.”

Intelligent Rail Transport System to Enhance GCC's Rail Projects

As reported by Zawya: With approximately $250 billion worth of rail projects planned or under way in the GCC [Gulf Coast] countries - and with plans to build more than 33,712 km of mainline routes and 3,004 km of metro, monorail and tramlines across the Middle East and North Africa - an "intelligent rail transport system" is vital to ensure an efficient, clean rail transport.

Intelligent rail system can help rail operators to reduce manpower requirements, meanwhile improving operational efficiency and passenger care capacity and to reduce operational expenses.

Ahead of the upcoming "MENA Rail and Metro Summit 2013" to be held on Oct. 28-30, 2013 at the Beach Rotana Hotel, Abu Dhabi, Yiwen Wang Chief Technology Officer, MEA Government and Enterprise Business, ZTE, said intelligent as applied in rail transport has two aspects, "one is to introduce the mature next generation communication technology into rail transit system, (and) other is to integrate the IT innovations and ideas with rail transport system." 

In an interview with the Saudi Gazette, Wang noted that that GCC countries have started great rail transportation construction plans, such as the Gulf railway plan jointly participated by all GCC countries, with Saudi Arabia's 9000 km railway and high-speed development blueprint, Qatar and Kuwait's grandiose plans for the subway and national railway, among others.

ZTE iRail includes a family of innovative solutions, such as GSM-R system which realize train-grand real-time communications, CCTV system with the ability of intelligent identifying, ZIFI systems which allows visitors to enjoy high speed Internet access while traveling at the speed of more than 300 mph [483 kmh].

In conventional rail system construction, communication and signaling system take only less than 5 percent of the total investment. When use of the new generation of iRail system, the initial capital expenditure will be improved slightly, but the proportion of the total investment is minimal and negligible. However, there is a significant contribution to improve transport efficiency and reduce operational expenditure, Wang pointed out.

Intelligent transport system provides innovative services relating to different modes of transport and traffic management and enables various users to be better informed and make safer, more coordinated, and "smarter" use of transport networks. And ZTE capitalizes on its having over 15 years industry experience in both rail/metro communication and signaling system, he added.

Moreover, he emphasized that whether it is "modern or future, high-speed, high efficiency, safety, comfort, energy saving, will be the key to intelligent rail transport system needs." 

Asked about the suitability of its solutions in the terrain and temperature of the GCC countries, Wang said "ZTE iRail solutions share a large number of mature technologies and design concepts that ZTE had accumulated in the field of communication and information technology. So far, ZTE's equipment have been widely deployed and verified in the climate of MENA region. We also provide flexible customization capabilities, so as to adapt to the culture of the Middle East."

He added that ZTE has nearly 30 years of experience in the communications industry, also has over 15 years experience in railway industry, saying that it has participated and witnessed the China railway, especially the high-speed railway, in recent 10 years of its rapid development. 

"At present, our solution has been widely used in railway projects in many Asian and European countries. Recently, we also noticed the MEA region, especially GCC countries, has become the world's hot spots of railway infrastructure investment, greatly leading the global growth rate of 8.1 percent. After careful thinking, ZTE wants to enter MEA's rail transport market and become an active partner in MEA's great railway development plan."

On whether the ZTE iRail solutions are economical, Wang explained that there are several aspects that iRail solutions have taken in consideration for saving investment. First, ZTE can provide end-to-end integration solution, greatly reduced the difficulty and manpower usage by the owner and the general contractor. 

"Evidenced by more than 50 subway lines' construction in China, the owner was inclined to cooperate with manufacturers with comprehensive integration abilities, like ZTE."

When operational expenses are taken into consideration, on the other hand, iRail solutions adopt various types of network-based new front-end sensors and back-end software and data platform, allowing rail transit system to have the self-perception ability on the change of environment conditions and business volume, he noted.

Time Dimensional Geo-Location Data Analysis

As reported by GCN: What are the next big steps in GIS analysis? James Hipple, GIS adviser to USDA's Risk Management Agency, points to two.

First, he said, is the ongoing effort to integrate data sets. Noting the massive data sets generated by various government agencies, Hipple pointed to the analytic potential they could deliver if they are combined. The snag? "Because they are such large data sets we end up with bandwidth problems," he said.

The other major step, he said, will be the inclusion of temporal analysis — mapping changes in selected characteristics over time. It could be a flood, the spread of a wildfire, vehicle or vessel movements, or changes in crop plantings. 

"A lot of times we haven't been doing the temporal stuff because the analysis tools haven't been there," Hipple said. "Now that those analysis tools are there I think a lot more of us are thinking, ’OK, how do we look at this in more of a temporal fashion?’ "

The tools for temporal analysis indeed are there, said Sinam Al-Khafaji, Esri’s account manager for USDA, at least since Esri introduced its temporal analysis tools earlier this year.

"You can with near real-time information set up a 'geofence,'" Al-Khafaji said. "If you're monitoring something that's moving you can set up a [scheduled or persistent] boundary and when that boundary is crossed you can set up actions and alerts to say, 'Hey, something has entered or exited this boundary.' You can also have workloads that say, 'When something enters this boundary run this process.' "

And it doesn't have to be just moving objects, he said. The same thing can be done with tabular values in data attached to a map. For example, a map might be configured to display changes in soil moisture over time, and a change in the data that rises above a specified value can trigger an alert.

"There is interest, and a lot of this technology is already available to USDA," Al-Khafaji said, "but it just takes time for this type of technology to gain wide and prevalent adoption."

Glitch on October 2012 Delta 4 Mission Is Behind GPS 2F-5 Launch Delay

As reported by Space News:  New information stemming from the investigation into an engine issue during a Delta 4 launch a year ago led United Launch Alliance (ULA) to delay the upcoming launch of the GPS 2F-5 positioning, navigation and timing satellite aboard a similar rocket, the company said.

The GPS 2F-5 satellite originally was slated to launch aboard a Delta 4 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., on Oct. 17. But that date was pushed back to Oct. 23 in recent weeks. Then, on Oct. 15, Air Force officials said the launch had been delayed again, but did not specify a reason.

In an update posted on its website Oct. 18, Denver-based ULA said “updated conclusions” about the October 2012 Delta 4 launch, in which the vehicle’s upper stage experienced a thrust glitch, led to the postponement. Despite thrust issue — the rocket’s RL-10 upper-stage engine underperformed — the rocket ultimately was able to deliver its payload, also a GPS 2F satellite, to its proper orbit using reserve fuel.

The problem and ensuing investigations delayed at least two subsequent missions. The Delta 4 returned to flight the following May with the successful launch of an Air Force Wideband Global Satcom communications satellite and has since conducted two more successful missions.

In the meantime, the Air Force in May successfully launched its fourth GPS 2F navigation satellite from Cape Canaveral atop a ULA Atlas 5 rocket.

ULA in December said a fuel leak was behind the Delta 4 upper-stage thrust anomaly during last year’s GPS mission. In its Oct. 18 statement, ULA said the ongoing investigation has led to “updated conclusions related to dynamic responses that occurred on the engine system during the first engine start event.” 

As a result, the GPS 2F-5 launch was delayed to determine whether more modifications to the launch vehicle are warranted, ULA said. The rocket “has completed the standard and checkout on the launch pad and will be maintained in a ready state for spacecraft mate and launch pending completion of this assessment,” ULA said. 

A new launch date will be determined once the assessment is completed in the coming weeks, ULA said. 

The October 2012 glitch triggered separate investigations by the Air Force and by ULA and RL-10 engine maker Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, Calif. 

Several weeks after the incident, Gen. William Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command, said the Air Force could ill afford to lose a satellite in a launch failure and that it was therefore important to determine the precise cause of the engine thrust anomaly. But just two months later, in January, Shelton said the investigations might never conclusively determine a root cause.