Metropolitan Wi-Fi Research Network at the Los Angeles State Historic Park

Abstract

UCLA is deploying a metropolitan-scale Wi-Fi mesh network near Downtown Los Angeles. It supports research in community-based urban participatory sensing, which focuses on how people can use their everyday mobile phones as sensors for data gathering on personal, community, and urban scales.  Moreover, we will use it to explore Cultural Civic Computing, a service-oriented urban computing model in which neighborhoods power the processes of imagining, specifying, and designing technology infrastructure for public places.

This work provides infrastructure with which to explore the potential that a large scale Wi-Fi deployment offers multicultural communities in investigating and reclaiming their own environments, and creating healthy and livable cities.  It also enables public exploration of creativity and cultural identity, as well as the diverse histories of our cities and neighborhoods.