Tuesday, 13 January 2009
Design and deployment of traffic signal stations within the Oklahoma City Micronet
Hall 5 (Phoenix Convention Center)
The Oklahoma City Micronet is a network of 40 observing stations measuring meteorological conditions within Oklahoma City developed through a partnership between the Oklahoma Climatological Survey and the City of Oklahoma City. The network includes four Oklahoma Mesonet stations and 36 stations mounted on traffic signals deployed to monitor and study the urban and suburban atmospheric conditions at near real-time. Each traffic signal station uses research quality instrumentation capable of measuring air temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, and precipitation. In addition, the traffic signal stations utilize a compact, low power, and aesthetically pleasing design using state-of-the-art components. Because of the technical innovations employed in the deployment of the traffic signal sites, data sets are collected at one-minute intervals across the Oklahoma City Micronet.
Once designed, assembled, and tested, the traffic signal stations were deployed across the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. The selection of station locations included an increased density of sites within the central business district with additional stations spanning the gradients from highly urban to suburban to rural zones. As such, station siting provided a challenge to ensure a representative measurement of the local environment, while considering the needs of the City of Oklahoma City and the infrastructure available. Even so, the average station spacing between sites is approximately 3 km.
Supplementary URL: http://okc.mesonet.org