MESSAGE is a three-year research project which started in October 2006 and is funded jointly by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Department for Transport. The project team, lead by Imperial College London, includes researchers at Universities of Cambridge, Leeds, Newcastle and Southampton. The project also has the support of nineteen non-academic organisations from public sector transport operations, commercial equipment providers, systems integrators and technology suppliers.

The project will develop and demonstrate the potential of diverse, low cost sensors to provide data for the planning, management and control of the environmental impacts of transport activity at urban, regional and national level. This includes their implementation on vehicles and people to act as mobile, real-time environmental probes, sensing transport and non-transport related pollutants and hazards. Three sensor platforms will be developed as part of the project. Cambridge will investigate the potential for personal devices (mobile phones) to support a sensing system. Newcastle will develop a “smart-dust” network using Zigbee (IEEE 802.15.4) motes, while Imperial will devise a network that utilises WiFi (IEEE 802.11.g) and WiMax (IEEE 802.16) technologies for communications and positioning, and a set of novel sensor designs. All platforms will integrate with a common data processing system.

Further Information

The MESSAGE project information poster can be found here and a further description can be found here. Alternatively, please contact Dr. Robin North (Tel: +44 (0) 20 7594 5977), Professor Neil Hoose or Professor John Polak at the Centre for Transport Studies, Imperial College London for more information.