Question: Seeking DC-area folks interested in building temperature sensors for urban heat island measurement

carohowe is asking a question about thermal-photography
Follow this topic

by carohowe | July 14, 2017 15:39 | #14653


Looking for DC folks who would be willing/able to facilitate or participate in workshops to discuss programs on sensing the urban heat island in our area and/or build systems to measure temperature by bicycle.

I posted about the broader context here, and some of the solutions that seem the best would require building some systems beyond our team's technical capacity. We would need access to soldering equipment and some volunteers! We can cover costs of equipment and potentially someone to facilitate such a session.



8 Comments

@stevie was talking about a project with ISeeChange.org in DC -- Stevie, did you have a link, or am I mixing it up with the project in Harlem? https://www.iseechange.org/investigations/5797f94f787db5d27a4bd77d

Is this a question? Click here to post it to the Questions page.

Reply to this comment...


Hi! The I See Change project was in Harlem not DC, but it might be a good example to check out.

Reply to this comment...


LB: Hi @carohowe i am wondering if there might be any use to starting with publicly available data on the DC urban heat island before building a lot of sensors? For instance, this data is available from NASA's ASTER satellite https://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/data.asp and LANDSAT Thematic Mapper (TM). Public Lab organizer @lprashad works with ASTER data, and @donblair @karenv & @nedhorning have already posted how to use thermal imagery from LANDSAT https://publiclab.org/notes/donblair/07-14-2014/how-to-download-and-use-landsat-images. I know this wasn't what your question was about, but it could potentially really inform your strategy as well as give you even more data to help illustrate your concerns.

Is this a question? Click here to post it to the Questions page.

Reply to this comment...


I haven't used this tool myself, but you might find this project about another open source temperature logger interesting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4030251/

Reply to this comment...


Thanks so much @liz @stevie and @bronwen for your input. Liz, I think it's a fantastic idea to use existing data to inform where we'd like to go deeper. @lprashad @donblair @karenv or @nedhorning: would you be open to chatting briefly about this? In particular, wondering how does ASTER / LANDSAT data compare to "experienced temperatures" on the ground, particularly in shaded areas?

Is this a question? Click here to post it to the Questions page.

Reply to this comment...


Hi - This recent paper might be helpful: www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/6/2/38/pdf From my experience satellite based surface temperature works best over fairly homogeneous features like water, crops and bare soil. A city environment is very heterogeneous. A lot depends on the level of spatial detail and temperature precision you are looking for. I'm happy to talk about this but I'm leaving for a one week trip early Friday.

Reply to this comment...


@carohowe Is Rockville close enough? I'm an experienced EE who would be happy to help build stuff

Is this a question? Click here to post it to the Questions page.

Reply to this comment...


Reply to this comment...


Log in to comment