Urban Digestive Systems. Towards the Sentient City. - MIT ...

for the 21st Century,” a ubiquitous logic deeplyembedded in everyday environments andactions (Weiser 1991). His vision liberatesinformation from the virtual space behind thescreen. Instead, technology is seamlessly embeddedin every object, effortlessly integratedinto daily routines. Arranging smart objectson a table triggers meaningful computationalinteractions, just as command sequences doon a traditional computer. Using sensor data,phones automatically recognize social context,such as a meeting or film screening, and adjusttheir behavior accordingly.This idea extends to scenarios where everyobject can sense relevant information about itsenvironment, infer the situation, and spontaneouslycommunicate with nearby devices orbroadcast its state to the world. Julian Bleeckerdubbed these blogging objects, or ‘blogjects’(Bleecker 2005). Alternatively, as sensingdevices miniaturize and distribute pervasively,they become smart dust, an invisible, intelligentinfrastructure for real-time environmentalsensing. Through such transformative technologies,the Sentient City can meet our growingdemand for rich, accurate, timely information.Smart dust, in particular, was a usefulstarting point for investigating the movementof garbage. We scattered our location sensorsinto the removal chain like dust particles in thewind, with no hope of retrieving them afterwards.The sensors journeyed within heaps oftrash, detected their own locations, reportedback to our servers, and allowed us to observethe unseen infrastructure they inhabited.Eventually, their batteries depleted and theircircuits were damaged from wear and tear, theystopped speaking and became indistinguishablefrom the surrounding trash.***In 2008, journalists from Greenpeace investigatedrumors of electronic waste exporting,a legal practice in the United States, butoutlawed in most countries of the world as aresult of the International Treaty of the BaselConvention. The journalists embedded GPSsensors into television sets that were brokenbeyond repair, and brought them to a localrecycling facility in the UK. Despite legislationbanning the movement of e-waste betweennations, the defunct televisions were trackedall the way to Nigeria, where they were likelyillegally dumped.Waste removal is a complex process,subject to myriad regulations and multipleexchanges that are difficult to track. Potentialfor fraud has always existed in this tangledweb, driving a long history of organized crimecontrol over the industry in various parts ofthe world. Most often this disproportionatelyaffects poorer areas over wealthier ones, raisingquestions of environmental justice whenthe consequences threaten public health.Globalization has made these transboundaryissues, as people attempt to cheaply exporthazardous waste to countries with lax regulations,instead of complying with local standards.Paradoxically, the very regulations thatshould prevent misuse have generated a greymarket for waste, where profit can be madeby bypassing legal procedures.The sheer volume of garbage that wegenerate also threatens sustainability. Goodsconsumption and garbage production are constantlyrising, yet safe and affordable landfillspace is becoming harder to find. In addition,most small regional landfills at the urbanfringe have been shut down, as cities have expandedand pushed out these practices. As aresult, waste travels much further than before,using more energy and producing more emissions.Furthermore, closed landfill sites oftencarry toxic legacies that require remediationand constrain later land use; thus hazardouswaste disposal becomes especially costly andvulnerable to fraudulent practices.***To ensure responsible waste removal, theproximity principle, as outlined in the BaselConvention, demands that waste is disposedof as close as possible to its source (Kummer,1999). However, waste removal chains areoften inadequately monitored to ensureenforcement. Such chains can involve manydifferent companies, but very little informationis passed between them; a standardizedinformation model for tracking waste doesnot exist. As a result, current procedures formonitoring the process rely on paper protocolsand voluntary evaluations of facilities, asystem built almost entirely on trust.As the “following the e-waste trail” projectby Greenpeace shows, technology can overcomemany of these obstacles (GreenpeaceInternational 2008). Active GPS-based locationsensors can effectively monitor individualwaste items anywhere in the world,highlighting potential abuse. Because sensorsare irretrievable once thrown away, GSM(Global Standard for Mobile Communications)and other mobile phone networks are importantinfrastructures for real-time communication.Online databases collect and storethis data remotely; advanced analytical andmapping software allow us to make sense ofmassive amounts of location data and pickout patterns from the noise.There are also low-tech methods of trackingthe motion of refuse, like relying on manyvolunteers to act as temporary sensors. A famousnaval spill of 29,000 rubber toys in 1992enabled a long-term study of ocean currentsin the Pacific. Oceanographers Ebbesmeyerand Ingraham recruited local residents,visitors, and beach workers to recover toysbeing washed ashore in Alaska. Based on thelocations of around 400 found toys, scientistsrefined their models of oceanic currents andcorrectly predicted the trajectories of theremaining toys (Ebbesmeyer et al. 2007). Thisdemonstrates what can be achieved by engaginga community even without expensivetracking technology.Beyond the tracking process itself, there areimportant precedents for communicating ourobservations to the public. One relevant priorwork is Eric Paulos’ Jetsam project (Paulos andJenkins 2005), which sought to improve publicawareness of waste issues. They deployed atrash bin in public space that was equippedwith various sensors and network connectivity.This ‘augmented trash bin’ gave feedback toits users by displaying statistical informationabout collected waste via projected visualizations.Such real-time feedback can deliverinformation about waste disposal in an intelligible,resonant way, and could potentially drivegreater awareness and behavioral change.These examples are at the core of whatwe are after. Yet, Trash Track goes beyondall of the above approaches, using pervasivetechnologies and volunteer mobilization toexpose challenges of waste management andsustainability to the world. It builds on previouswork by the SENSEable City Lab thatexplores how the increasing deployment ofsensors and mobile technologies radicallytransforms our understanding and descriptionof cities. The project is an initial investigationinto understanding the removal chain in urbanareas, and represents a model for change thatis taking hold in cities: a bottom-up approachto managing resources and promoting environmentalawareness. Trash Track hints at animportant, but little discussed aspect of thevision described as the Internet of Things. Asargued by the novelist Bruce Sterling, we candirect every object to the optimal reuse scenarioand ultimately achieve a condition withzero waste, if we know where all things are inthe world (Sterling 2005).Technology DesignThe whole project has made me much moreoptimistic about our ability to find solutions tobig, complex problems. Seeing how the peopleinvolved in the project are using their creativityand scientific expertise to tackle something asmundane yet complicated as trash disposal isvery encouraging.— Trash Track volunteer survey***The Trash Track project was conceived in thesummer of 2008 as a proposal for the Towardthe Sentient City exhibition, organized by theArchitectural League of New York. Rex Britter, avisiting scientist with the SENSEable City Lab,suggested the idea of tracking garbage in thecity in order to better understand the collectionof waste — which Bill Mitchell dubbed the ‘removalchain’ as the counterpart to the supplychain — and eventually improve its logistics.Tracking trash intrigued us both as a windowinto its environmental impact on the city and asan extension to the Lab’s past work in diffusepervasive digital sensing to explore the physicalcontext of the city.The Trash Track concept also raised questionsand concerns in its developmental phase.Was the inevitable deposit of potentially toxictracking electronics into landfills contrary to theenvironmental goal of the project? Any demonstrationof this technology would inevitablyproduce a small amount of electronic waste,but the knowledge and information obtained bytracking waste products could provide enormousbenefits outweighing the risks. Thinkingahead to the future, it will be possible to carryout projects like Trash Track in more environmentallyfriendly ways. Rapid miniaturization,organically based batteries, and self-poweringmethods will all contribute to the greening ofelectronic sensing devices.94-95 MIT Senseable City Lab Trash Track