The MESSAGE Project
Mobile Environmental Sensing System Across a Grid Environment
Professor John Polak
Director, Centre for Transport Studies
Imperial College London
j.polak@imperial.ac.uk
www.message-project.org
Outline
• Background and motivation
• Overview
• Challenges and innovation
• Field trials
• Conclusion
MESSAGE - headlines
• 3 year project starting October 2006
• Funded jointly by EPSRC and DfT under
EPSRC’s e-Science demonstration programme
• 5 Universities, 19 industrial partners
• Combination and extension of e-Science,
sensor, communication and positioning
technologies
• New sensing infrastructure based on
combination of ad-hoc mobile and fixed sensors
MESSAGE – collaboration
Equipment providers
Software providers
Service providers
End users
MESSAGE - motivation
• Urban air quality is a major policy concern,
especially the role of road transport
– Understanding vehicle emissions
– Understanding human exposure
– Managing network operations to optimise congestion
and air quality outcomes
• Research and practice is hampered by lack of
data of sufficient spatial and temporal granularity
• Opportunity to capitalise on low cost sensor,
positioning and communications technologies
MESSAGE – overview
• Heterogeneous fixed and
mobile sensors on
infrastructure, vehicles and
people
• Sensors communicate via
wireless networks
• Positioning via GPS +
wireless & cellular ranging
• Integration of processing
along the data path
• Multiple application studies
in different local contexts
MESSAGE – multi-disciplinarity
• MESSAGE involves integrating academic
expertise from several disciplines:
– 1Transport network modellers
– Air quality modellers
– Geomatricians
– Computer Scientists
– Electrical Engineers
– Sensor Developers (Physicists and Chemists)
• Together with industry experience and tangible
real-world applications
MESSAGE – research challenges
• Field units
– Sensors
– Positioning
– Communications
• e-Science
– Scalability
– Distributed data mining
– Online estimation of pollutant hotspots
• Transport and environment modelling
– Traffic management and control
– Traveller information
MESSAGE – field units
We are deliberately deploying a variety
of different sensor, positioning and
communications technologies, to
ensure that the MESSAGE system is
generic
Sensors
Positioning
Comms
Newcastle
Electrochecmical
GPS
Zigbee
Cambridge
Semi-conductor
RSSI
Cellular
GUSTO (UV)
WiFi ranging
WiFi
Imperial
MESSAGE – e-Science challenge
• We will build on the foundation of past e-science
projects (DiscoveryNet and OGSA-DAI):
– Grid-enabled sensor service (a sensor is a service
generating data)
– Semantically-described sensors (Sensor-ML)
– Sensor data collection and warehousing
– Querying distributed data storage
– Workflow based analysis of sensor data
• New challenge: Scalable distributed analytics for
pervasive mobile heterogeneous sensors
MESSAGE – e-Science innovation
• Development of sensor-level protocols to support
in-network analytics
• Development of real-time in-network analytics
• Associated extensions of Discovery Net to
support in-network analytics
MESSAGE – modelling innovation
• Existing transport and air quality models have a
simple centralised architecture
• Need to evolve new forms of interpretive and
predictive transport models
– accommodate multiple data sources and scales and
levels of behavioural richness
– support distributed architectures
• Must stimulate academic and commercial
innovation in tool and service development and
deployment
MESSAGE – architecture
MESSAGE – case studies
London
Gateshead
Leicester
Cambridge
Mobile Sensors
Gusto (5-10) &
Motes (<50)
Motes (100) with
GPS
Motes (<100)
with GPS
Abington (50)
Static Sensors
AQM (~90)
Motes (200)
Motes (200)
AQM (5)
Main objectives:
RT. sensing &
comms
RT pervasive
sensing & comms
RT pervasive
sensing & comms
RT info on
exposure
Dynamic Env.
Modelling
Integrate databases/models
Integrate with
Leicester UTC
Integrate with
TIME-EACM
Information &
Traffic control
Smart market
demand mgt.
Real-Time control
Mobile phone
network
CO, CO2, NO2,
SO2, noise, °C
CO, CO2, NO2,
CO, CO2, NO2,
SO2, noise, °C,
SO2, noise, °C,
humidity/pressure humidity/pressure
Parameters
measured
CO, CO2, NO2,
SO2
MESSAGE – London case study
AIR
POLLUTION
SENSOR
IEEE 802.11/16
ACCESS
POINT
SENSOR
• Imperial and Newcastle sensor units
Wired
Wired
Internet
Internet
• Buses, fleet vehicles and street furniture
• Mobile deployment of heterogeneous systems
• Integration with existing TfL data streams
• Feedback to traffic management
DATA
PROCESSING
SITE
MESSAGE – London test site
• Camden High St.
• Multiple bus types
• Candidate routes
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–
–
–
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29
31
88
168
274
Opportunities
• MESSAGE is concerned with integrating a
number of technologies and approaches from
within the e-Science community and beyond
• Although our context is urban air quality, the
concept of pervasive mobile sensing has much
wider application
• Other application areas are being actively
developed
Thank you
www.message-project.org
Scalable eScience hardware