Urban Innovation Research
Using urban sensing, analytics, and community engagement to make sense of global trends
Effective March 31, 2023, Microsoft Project Eclipse research will be concluded, and the API will be shut down. At this time, historical data will still be available via the Microsoft Planetary Computer (opens in new tab) pursuant to the Terms of Use for Microsoft Project Eclipse API.
Why cities?
Sustainable urbanization and climate adaptation are global challenges, but their impacts are felt locally – in cities and neighborhoods. We are using urban sensing, analytics, and community engagement to make sense of these global trends at hyperlocal scales and help empower cities and communities to build their capacity for resilience.
Air quality, for example, contributes to over 7 million premature deaths globally each year, but we know remarkably little about how air quality varies between or even within neighborhoods. By building air quality sensor networks at the neighborhood scale, and engaging local communities, we are seeking to make this invisible killer visible and actionable.
Air quality measurement in Chicago
Urban Innovation partnered with JCDecaux and Array of Things deployed over 100 low-cost air pollution sensors across the city of Chicago in what may be the densest real-time air quality monitoring network deployed in any major US city. We worked with the Environmental Law and Policy Center to create a mini-grant program that supports local stakeholders and community scientists in identifying locations and making data digestible and relevant; we also partnered with academics and city stakeholders to make the data actionable. For residents, we had a website that enabled anybody at a selected bus stop to scan a QR code and see their air quality in real time. Residents of Chicago could see air quality data in their own neighborhood.
Sense
Project Eclipse provides a full-stack solution for hyperlocal urban air quality sensing. Learn more >
Build
We’ve developed a real-time calibration solution to help users monitor and get insight from the data.
Engage
We are partnering with city governments and community groups to build actionable data experiences.
About Urban Innovation at Microsoft Research
Microsoft researchers working in Urban Innovation study and build technology to help shape the future of urban environments. Expertise in design, hardware and software prototyping and deployment, electrical engineering, biology, chemistry, and social and data science, is combined to target three application areas: climate change and related environmental effects on society; productivity and the economic health of cities; social equity and the health of people and their communities.
Environment
Neighborhood level environmental measurement for equitable urban climate resilience. Check out Project Eclipse.
Economy
Analyzing large datasets can help anticipate and prepare for regional shifts in population and employment trends.
Community
Microsoft’s EcoPod pop-up lab brings residents together with scientists & technologists to understand environmental data from their neighborhood.
Watch on demand
Learn how Project Eclipse is promoting climate equity and resilience in cities via hyperlocal environmental sensing. Presented by Scott Counts, Senior Principal Research Manager, from Microsoft Research, Redmond.
This panel convenes government, academic, civic tech, and community science leaders from Chicago to discuss the challenges and opportunities of monitoring environmental exposures at the neighborhood scale.