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Boston (and other cities) are leaking!
Google Street View Cars Want to Scan Your City for Gas Leaks
Google Street View’s mapping cars have been taking more than just visual scans while touring the streets of three U.S. cities lately. In Boston, Staten Island, and Indianapolis, Google’s cars were equipped with methane sensors, to pinpoint the locations and severities of thousands of natural gas leaks, a chronic problem for many cities. The mapping project is a pilot program helmed by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund to gather data and encourage infrastructure repairs. Methane is an especially potent greenhouse gas; it is roughly 120 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere (and therefore at driving climate change) than carbon dioxide, if compared pound for pound.
The cars pinpointed the size and locations of several thousands of gas leaks from distribution pipes that snake under the cities’ streets. Each leak was scanned twice for accuracy, and translated on to a series of interactive maps, which launched online Wednesday. Google and EDF plan to expand the project into more cities and broaden the range of detection to a host of other pollutants, like ozone, benzene, carbon monoxide, and several volatile organic compounds.
Boston’s aging, corrosion-prone natural gas pipelines are infamous for gas leaks; a 2012 study found gas leaking from more than 3,300 places underground. Six of those leaks were registered to be in excess of the level where explosions could occur. Google Street View’s readings, taken in 2013, found an average of one leak per square mile of the city driven, or approximately the same leak rate as found in the 2012 study. Check out the interactive Boston map here.
Google Street View’s mapping cars have been taking more than just visual scans while touring the streets of three U.S. cities lately. In Boston, Staten Island, and Indianapolis, Google’s cars were equipped with methane sensors, to pinpoint the locations and severities of thousands of natural gas leaks, a chronic problem for many cities. The mapping project is a pilot program helmed by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund to gather data and encourage infrastructure repairs. Methane is an especially potent greenhouse gas; it is roughly 120 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere (and therefore at driving climate change) than carbon dioxide, if compared pound for pound.
The cars pinpointed the size and locations of several thousands of gas leaks from distribution pipes that snake under the cities’ streets. Each leak was scanned twice for accuracy, and translated on to a series of interactive maps, which launched online Wednesday. Google and EDF plan to expand the project into more cities and broaden the range of detection to a host of other pollutants, like ozone, benzene, carbon monoxide, and several volatile organic compounds.
Boston’s aging, corrosion-prone natural gas pipelines are infamous for gas leaks; a 2012 study found gas leaking from more than 3,300 places underground. Six of those leaks were registered to be in excess of the level where explosions could occur. Google Street View’s readings, taken in 2013, found an average of one leak per square mile of the city driven, or approximately the same leak rate as found in the 2012 study. Check out the interactive Boston map here.
Article here.
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