Several urban and suburban areas report higher temperatures than their surrounding rural areas, a phenomenon known as the heat island effect. The combination of rising temperatures, frequent and harsher heat waves, and the heat island effect are increasingly harmful to air and water quality and, consequently, to people's health. Prior work indicates that surface and air temperature are the best indicators of the conditions people experience with warmer weather. Satellites can monitor surface temperature over large areas, and standard weather stations and mobile traversers can measure air temperature. However, the methods for monitoring air temperature are expensive to deploy and maintain (they are power-hungry and rely on cellular networks for collecting data). Therefore, this team wil propose developing low-cost and battery-free sensing systems to reduce deployment and maintenance costs. By harnessing power from existing radio frequency signals, this team can deploy battery-free tags that cost cents per unit, are scalable, and are environmentally friendly. This team can leverage public transportation to collect the data from these tags. By the end of this project, they aim to identify and monitor heat islands in Urbana-Champaign. They will:
1. Develop battery-free sensors to collect air temperature
2. Develop a prototype for the collection of data
3. Analyze the data to gain insight into hot spots in Urbana-Champaign