In about a year, the Department of Homeland Security's Science
& Technology Directorate (S&T) hopes to have prototype
phones from Apple, LG, Qualcomm, and Samsung that can sense carbon
monoxide and fire.
On Friday, the S&T said that it has begun actively funding a
project that has been in the research phase since 2007 to develop
cell phones equipped with sensors capable to detecting dangerous
chemicals.
The DHS directorate said that it's pursuing Cooperative Research
and Development Agreements with the four mobile phone makers.
The project, called Cell-All, aims to deploy low-cost sensor chips
-- less than USD 1 each -- in mobile phones and to coordinate mass
air sampling through mobile network carriers.
NASA, Qualcomm, and Rhevision Technology -- an In-Q-Tel-funded
optics company that has developed chemical-sensing silicon -- have
been working on the core technology.
The principal benefit of "crowd-sourcing human safety," as the
government puts it, would be to reduce false alarms. A single
report of chlorine gas from a subway might be the result of an
error or anomaly. Multiple reports would be a sign of a potentially
serious situation, enough to prompt warnings to phone users in the
vicinity and to alert authorities.
The S&T insists that phone subscribers will have to opt-in to
the network and that data transmissions will be anonymous. "Privacy
is as important as technology," said Stephen Dennis, program
manager of Cell-All, in a statement. "After all, for Cell-All to
succeed, people must be comfortable enough to turn it on in the
first place."
Detection, identification, and notification in the Cell-All system
is supposed to take place within 60 seconds. Users supposedly will
be able to choose their preferred form of incident notification:
vibration, noise, text message or phone call.
The S&T envisions the system as a way to defend against
terrorism as well a way to avert incidents like one reported last
year in which a woman near Swansea, South Carolina was killed by an
invisible cloud of ammonia that had leaked from a local chemical
plant.
In December last year, S&T led a study with the help of the
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) to better
understand the dispersal of smoke or accidentally released
chemicals in the MBTA subway system.