Prof. John E. Fernández, director of the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, writes in a letter to The Boston Globe that the Trump administration should make an investment in rebuilding America’s infrastructure. Fernández writes that President Trump’s desire to build is good, “for local economies, job creation, and protection from emerging threats such as climate change.”
Synaps Labs, an adtech startup co-founded by Sloan graduate student Alex Pustov, uses analytics to cater digital billboard advertising to specific individuals depending on the make and model of their vehicle. This technology could also potentially “fund traffic analytics, improve road safety, and allow cities to adopt advances in digital infrastructure faster,” writes Frederick Daso for Forbes.
In an article for The Boston Globe, Prof. Charles Fine and Research Affiliate David Gonsalvez examine how to improve the City of Boston’s transportation infrastructure, which could help increase the region’s livability and foster economic growth. Fine and Gonsalvez note that “a city’s mobility architecture can have a huge impact on its economy.”
MIT researchers have developed a system to map streetlights, writes Linda Poon for The Atlantic CityLab. Using sensors mounted on top of vehicles, the system measures illumination levels, gathers data into a map, and distinguishes between background light and streetlights through machine learning, explains Poon.
Alexandra Ossola of Popular Science features Prof. Kamal Youcef-Toumi’s work developing an autonomous robot to patrol pipes for leaks. “The two-liter-bottle-size prototype cruises through pipes at up to 3 miles per hour in search of subtle pressure differences that indicate a loss of fluids,” writes Ossola.
Jason Keyser of the Associated Press previews a speech by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, delivered at a forum hosted by MIT's Center for Advanced Urbanism, an interdisciplinary think tank that focuses on big-scale urban design problems.