ORNL research project draws on sensors deployed as part of the “Chattanooga Smart Community Collaborative”
As previously noted in teknovation.biz posts, Chattanooga’s “Smart Community Collaborative” is drawing researchers from a variety of organizations. One of those is Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) which partnered with the Smart City Division of the City of Chattanooga’s Department of Information Technology to better understand how daily mobility patterns affect energy usage.
According to this ORNL news release, hundreds of thousands of commuters across the country travel daily from their houses, apartments and other residential spaces to commercial buildings and from offices and schools to gyms and grocery stores. These destinations, combined with transportation between them, account for more than half of the total energy consumed in the U.S. each year.
The team studied traffic data captured by 45 sensors stationed at major intersections in the busy downtown area of Chattanooga. Although the sensors are designed to monitor traffic flow and reduce congestion by optimizing the timing of signal changes, the dense network was also suitable for the researchers to study the energy consumption of nearby buildings.
