Project Eclipse

a low-cost, accurate air quality sensing platform for cities

Problem: Poor air quality is something most urban residents experience regularly, but because it’s largely invisible and we lack sensors to help inform us it has become something of a “silent killer”. Linked to a number of serious health ailments, including heart and lung disease, as well as issues like asthma aggravation, the World Health Organization estimates that 91% of the world’s population lives in places where air quality exceeds guideline limits. With Project Eclipse, the Urban Innovation Initiative presents a full stack -from sensors to analytics- air quality sensing platform for cities. The goal is a radical increase (10x – 100x) in the geographic granularity of environmental sensing in cities in support of a variety of public health scenarios.

Goal: In Miami, Florida the City of Miami and Microsoft Research are working to deploy these sensors for select use cases. The goal is to demonstrate and work with the City of Miami to help them in their climate resilience & sustainability efforts. The code for Miami was brought in to help support user testing for one specific use case.