This is something going along the same lines in openness as some of the ideas behind the roomwareproject, although different in piping out data feeds from a fixed sensor network. This is very interesting to track and also heads in the direction of country APIs piping public and sensory data to business and the public(”us”).

“Surely a lot of data gets crunched every minute in Cambridge, Mass., home of Harvard, MIT and lots of technology-focused companies. Now scientists hope to capture seriously fine-grained data about the very city itself, and let students and researchers elsewhere benefit.

Engineers at Harvard University and BBN Technologies Inc. are collaborating on what they believe is a first-of-its kind wireless sensor network atop Cambridge light poles.

Initially the sensors will grab weather data like temperature, rainfall and wind speeds, but eventually the project designers plan to integrate such things as pollution detectors and traffic monitors.

What’s new about the system, known as CitySense, is that the sensor information will be entirely open to the public over the Web. And people anywhere can sign up for a slot to run experiments on the network.

So while a local doctor could check whether an asthma patient lives in a neighborhood with high levels of dangerous particulates, another researcher could use the system to model, say, how temperature and air pressure vary over short distances in an urban environment.

Even the data-transfer performance of the network itself - a “mesh” system in which each sensor acts as a transmitter and receiver - could be worth analyzing.

So far just a few sensors, each smaller than a football, are up on Cambridge light poles, which will also provide power to the devices.

But the National Science Foundation, which is fueling CitySense with $900,000 over four years, expects it to grow to 100 sensors. Even Cambridge always could use some more data.”

(via forbes)