SmaCiSe – Smart City Sensing – Thermal Screening of Physical Objects and Air-quality at Urban Scale

Initial situation, problem to solve and motivation to carry out the R&D project

To improve a city’s environmental condition and infrastructure effectively and understand its optimization potentials detailed knowledge on the situation is mandatory. Currently, an integrated and comprehensive data basis with frequently collected up-to-date thermal and air quality digital information on city level is missing or fragmented.

Drones equipped with infrared cameras and sensors can effectively and automated create images of urban districts. Specialized digital image processing software turns the photographs into three dimensional models, and links them to thermal and air-quality information. Currently most studies and building simulations in this field focus on individual buildings and use simple and standardized assumptions for the buildings environment.

To achieve optimal results, it is essential to extend these studies to microclimatic entities, including several buildings as well as their surroundings.

Goals and level of innovation compared to the state of the art

The project addresses innovations in acquisition and sensing as well as densification of geo-referenced city related data with novel processing chains in city data analytics. The core of the project lies in the thermal data acquisition from aerial images on an urban or district level resulting in a 3D thermal and air pollutant representation of urban structures. City-scale aerial thermal and air-quality mapping in 3D enables insights beyond that of pure simulation based on static GIS and cadastral register data. The project therefore focuses on small-scale thermal environment analysis, especially urban heat island effects, as well as on concentration levels of major pollutants.

The project addresses a selected and local scale densification of city data by proposing a three dimensional microclimate and air-quality model that represents a volumetric model of air- and surface-temperatures as well as of air-quality related measurements at various height levels. As innovative data acquisition platforms, dedicated detector heads to be mounted on zeppelins, drones and UAV’s (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) will be developed.

Expected results and findings

• A new testing method that could become standard for outdoor thermal environment and air-quality assessment at residential quarter level
• The “proof of concept”: technical viability and continuous process chain
• Specific optimization potential for four to eight specifically selected urban quarters in Austria and Guangdong.
• Creation of an urban district-specific knowledge base (containing microclimatic and pollution-related information)
• Analysis of dependencies and correlations for potential descriptive or predictive models
• Process to identify critical spots in the districts, guidelines for improvements
• Potential new models for the microclimatic description of the thermal environment in urban quarters
• Decision support-guidelines for urban planners and public authorities