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The Heat Mapper: A Device to Measure Albedo

CSEF · 2023 Electronics & Electromagnetics Honorable_mention Award

Arun Sneha · 8

Overview

Urban heat islands pose prevalent problems in cities, causing dangerously high temperatures as dark surfaces absorb and reemit more sunlight. Heat islands must be monitored, and devices called albedometers do this by measuring albedo, the fraction of light reflected off a surface. However, albedometers are extremely expensive. The goal of this project was to create a low-cost, portable device to measure the albedo of materials commonly found in cities and display each albedo value in a heat map. The device can be tested generally with any material. If successful, it can help urban planners map out heat islands, enabling the design of cooler cities–though the challenge is balancing cost and efficacy. To measure albedo, the ratio of reflected to incident light intensity was found using a circuit involving light sensors, connected and coded through a microprocessor. The extent of the work involved testing various materials (simulating a city) in the Sun. Comparing the device’s output and the materials’ known albedo values, the device’s margin of error was 15 to 20 percent. There was some success, but the accuracy can be improved with different light sensing methods. The results are more specific to this particular case, since testing hasn’t been done in a real city yet. This path is worth pursuing to eventually use multiple inexpensive, portable devices around cities, creating stations monitoring heat islands. Combining various aspects of circuitry and software in the device was a key learning experience.

Source coverage

This record comes from a published award list, not a complete project archive. Its abstract comes from CSEF's public project showcase as archived by the Internet Archive before judging (https://web.archive.org/web/20230401224130/https://ca-csef.zfairs.com/showcase/ShowcaseInfo?f=838e60b7-ea75-46e8-865c-fde4864244b3); the version presented may differ.

Awards (1)

  • Category Award: HM

Competition history

  • CSEF 2023 Electronics & Electromagnetics · Entry J1024

Resources

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