[Editors] From MIT: New Wireless Project

[Patti Richards]

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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MIT Real Time Rome project to debut at Venice Biennale
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For Immediate Release
Contact: Patti Richards
Phone: 617-253-8923
Email: prichards at mit.edu

PHOTO, GRAPHIC AVAILABLE

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Real Time Rome, a pioneering MIT project that 
promises to usher in a new era of urban mapmaking, will have its 
worldwide debut at the Venice Biennale, the prestigious biannual 
exhibition of contemporary art and design that runs from Sept. 10 to 
Nov. 20.

The MIT project utilizes data gathered, in real time and at an 
unprecedented scale, from cell phones and other wireless 
technologies, to better understand the patterns of daily life in 
Rome, and to illustrate what ubiquitous connectivity in an urban 
environment looks like.

"In today's world, wireless mobile communications devices are 
creating new dimensions of interconnectedness between people, places 
and urban infrastructures," said project director Carlo Ratti, 
director of the SENSEable City Lab at MIT. "The goal of Real Time 
Rome is to use this connectivity to map the city in real time, which 
may ultimately lead to a deeper understanding of how modern cities 
function."

Real Time Rome features seven large animations, projected on 
transparent plexiglass screens. One screen shows traffic congestion 
around the city, while another screen shows the exact movements of 
all the city's buses and taxis. Another screen is able to track 
Romans celebrating major events like the World Cup or the city's 
annual White Nights festival (Notte Bianca, which will happen on 
Sept. 9, the evening before the Biennale opening). Additional screens 
show how tourists use urban spaces and how cars and pedestrians move 
about the city.

Ratti believes these types of visualizations will help reduce the 
inefficiencies of present day urban systems and open the way to a 
more sustainable future: "Our hope is that projects like Real Time 
Rome will give city dwellers more control over their environment by 
allowing them to make more informed decisions about their 
surroundings. Imagine being able to avoid traffic congestion, or 
knowing where people are congregating on a Saturday afternoon. In a 
worst-case scenario, such real time systems could also make it easier 
to evacuate a city in case of emergency."

Ratti's team obtains its data anonymously from cell phones, GPS 
devices on buses and taxis, and other wireless mobile devices, using 
advanced algorithms developed by Telecom Italia, the principal 
sponsor of the project.  These algorithms are able to discern the 
difference between, say, a mobile phone signal from a user who is 
stuck in traffic and one that is sitting in the pocket of a 
pedestrian wandering down the street. Data are made anonymous and 
aggregated from the beginning, so there are no implications for 
individual privacy.

"The exhibit will hopefully trigger many more urban studies that take 
advantage of the already existing data on mobile phones and 
transportation systems, in order to create a deeper understanding of 
how cities are being used," said project curator Andres Sevtsuk, a 
graduate student in urban studies and planning.

Ratti describes Real Time Rome as a new kind of mapmaking. Along with 
other powerful interactive maps, such as Google Earth, Real Time Rome 
is backed up by huge databases that will ultimately make it possible 
to conduct highly customized searches and view displays in real time.

"We are very excited to carry out our experiment in Rome, the city 
where Gianbattista Nolli refined modern cartography in 1748," Ratti 
said. "Maps of the future will be large databases that will enable us 
to extract fragments that suit our needs, much like we can do today 
on the web, and will also tap into the coming revolution in RFID 
(radio frequency identification) technology."

Real Time Rome is produced by MIT's SENSEable City Laboratory, an 
initiative that studies the impact of new technologies on cities.

Other MIT projects will also be on display at the Biennale, in the 
same location as Real Time Rome.  They include including an 
interactive bus stop with wireless Internet; designs for digitally 
enhanced public spaces in the Milla Digital in Zaragoza, Spain; a 
smart car and public transportation system by the MIT Media Lab and 
Design Lab; and new computer interfaces by the Tangible Media Group 
at the Media Lab.

"All these projects from MIT deal with specific aspects of the urban 
environment and digital technology," said Sevtsuk.  "Together they 
start to form a multifaceted picture of how real-time communications 
can change urban design."

Following the Venice Biennale, the SENSEable City Laboratory will 
launch the SENSEable City Consortium, a major research initiative 
aimed at bringing together city and public administrators, network 
operators, electronic hardware and software producers and urban 
hardware manufacturers in MIT's unique research environment.

The principal sponsor of Real Time Rome is Telecom Italia. Technical 
partners are the Rome public transportation authority (ATAC), Google, 
Samarcanda Taxi and the city of Rome.

The Real Time Rome team at the SENSEable City Lab is composed of 
Ratti, Sevtsuk, Burak Arikan, Francesco Calabrese, Assaf Biderman, 
Filippo Dal Fiore, Saba Ghole, Daniel Gutierrez, Sonya Huang, Sriram 
Krishnan, Justin Moe, Carlo Ratti, Francisca Rojas, and Najeeb Tarazi.


For more information, visit senseable.mit.edu/realtimerome/.
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