Google's mapping cars discover hundreds of underground gas leaks

That's useful. The mapping cars could carry some other useful sensors. Air quality is obvious. Less obvious is RF leakage from cable TV cable, which can interfere with other spectrum users. Cable companies used to have to check this every two years, but they lobbied to not have to check it.

Another hint at what is to come when Google starts organizing the world&#x27;s _offline_ information.<p>Google Books and Google Streetview are just the tip of the iceberg.<p>I would be willing to bet that &quot;massively distributed real-time data collector&quot; was listed as a key business case by whoever pitched self-driving cars at Google.

Is the collected raw data available? Would be interesting to cross-reference what the Google cars found with 311 complaints.<p>Here&#x27;s NYC&#x27;s 311 data: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nycopendata.socrata.com&#x2F;Social-Services&#x2F;311-Service-Requests-from-2010-to-Present&#x2F;erm2-nwe9" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nycopendata.socrata.com&#x2F;Social-Services&#x2F;311-Service-...</a><p>...I recall there being a category for people calling in gas odor, but the Socrata site seems to be slow&#x2F;down at the moment.

More details on the program: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edf.org&#x2F;climate&#x2F;methanemaps" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edf.org&#x2F;climate&#x2F;methanemaps</a> and the other cities they&#x27;ve mapped: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edf.org&#x2F;climate&#x2F;methanemaps&#x2F;city-snapshots" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edf.org&#x2F;climate&#x2F;methanemaps&#x2F;city-snapshots</a>

Why are these sensors not placed on garbage trucks or police cars?

Slightly off topic, but one idea I had was for Google to share road usage stats with cities and businesses. Right now cities put out an air tube on the road that counts the cars. Google could provide much more insight given they already can tell you road congestion. They could give it away for free to a city and&#x2F;or make businesses pay for it.

I wonder if accelerometer data would be useful to determine road quality? It may help cash strapped cities like here in Toledo prioritize the bumpiest roads to fix.

This strikes me as an excellent IoT application, gas sensors are cheap and simple SMS texting could send a message from an IoT device that it detected gas and its GPS co-ordinates.

From the article:<p><i>residents paid as much as $1.5 billion extra between 2000 to 2011 for gas lost to leaks.</i><p>Is anyone able to calculate approximate how much gas this is in volume or weight? 1.5 billion divided by residential gas price per unit?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=iyNeOKi2sO8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=iyNeOKi2sO8</a>

And all they had to sacrifice was personal privacy!

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Unintended_consequences" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Unintended_consequences</a>