UCLA Team Showcases Innovative Personalized Environmental Report Card with Interactive Mobile + Web Demonstration at WIRED NextFest 2008 in Chicago

Business Wire, Oct 3, 2008

LOS ANGELES -- A team of researchers from the UCLA Center for Embedded Networked Sensing have unveiled a unique interactive demonstration of the Personal Environmental Impact Report (PEIR, http://peir.cens.ucla.edu). PEIR provides personalized, daily estimates of measures like particulate matter exposure on roadways and carbon emissions due to driving. It works by combining GPS points from mobile phones with environmental information, enabling users to see online how their daily choices affect the environment and how the environment affects them. PEIR users can then compare their averages with other PEIR participants in their Facebook social network. The NextFest exhibit lets people explore PEIR and how it works by comparing the environmental effects of alternative transportation types and travel routes as traced on a touch screen display.

PEIR is one of nearly 50 innovations selected by WIRED to feature at NextFest, the annual free public showcase of global innovations transforming the world, running now through October 12 in Chicago's Millennium Park. The PEIR system, now in beta testing, taps into state and regional transportation models to estimate environmental measures specific to a user's actual travel patterns. The web-based exploration helps people see how lifestyle changes can affect their personal environmental impact and exposure. The exhibit also invites visitors to follow "a day in the life" of three PEIR users to learn about the workings of the system. A new feature lets visitors modify variables such as car type and route to see the effect of different transportation options.

The PEIR team is currently accepting inquiries from people who would like to sign on as beta testers and is investigating a variety of options to build a large user base while preserving the open research environment that inspired the project. PEIR is part of the CENS Urban Sensing research program (http://urban.cens.ucla.edu), which aims to make everyday mobile phones act as sensors and collect data for their owners. Urban Sensing applications range from community advocacy efforts to activities like PEIR, which promote personal engagement and reflection. The PEIR demonstration is presented in partnership with the mobile technology company Nokia and the design firm The Groop.

The Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (http://research.cens.ucla.edu) is a major research enterprise that develops wireless sensing systems and applies this revolutionary technology to critical scientific and societal applications. Expanding on the concept of the Internet, these distributed systems, composed of stationary and robotic smart sensors, reveal otherwise unobservable phenomena and provide new insights into the physical world. With major funding from the National Science Foundation's Science and Technology Center program, CENS is housed in the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science (http://engineer.ucla.edu) and is made up of researchers from UCLA, UC Riverside, UC Merced, USC and the CalTech.