Dr. Bérengère Lebental
French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks (IFFSTAR)
November 6, 2012 | 12:00 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room
Host: John Huggins
While today's galloping urbanization weighs heavily on both people and environment, the massive instrumentation of urban spaces appears a landmark toward sustainability. Collecting massively distributed information requires the use of high performance communication systems as well as sensors with very small ecological footprints. Because of their high sensitivity, the wide range of their observables, their energetic self-sufficiency and their low cost, micro and nanosensors are particularly well-suited to urban metrology. We present the various sensor concepts developed by LPICM and IFSTTAR (for instance, conformable mechanical, chemical and gas microsensors using nanomaterials) in the field of urban sustainability, and discuss how they can be integrated into sensor networks tested by IFSTTAR in both lab and urban settings. The massively distributed data are interpreted using advanced physical models and inverse methods in order to monitor a wide range of observables, in the fields of environmental monitoring, structural health monitoring, and energy performances monitoring. We discuss the shortcomings of evaluating the performances of environmental sensors only in lab conditions or directly in real, urban conditions. As a solution to these issues, the Sense-City project, an 8 year, 9M Euro equipment project funded by the French "Programme d'Investissement d'Avenir" started in 2012, will offer a suite of high quality facilities for the prototyping and performance assessment in realist conditions of micro- and nanosensors devoted to sustainable urbanization. The Sense-City project, supported by the French consortium partners IFSTTAR, ESIEE-Paris, CSTB, LPICM, will provide a realist urban test space for nanosensors, both far more complex than clean rooms and far more controllable than actual cities.
caffeet.org/2012/08/09/berengere-lebental
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