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The Spime I developed in conjunction with two of the SU students was an Intelligence tool – ‘citizen as sensor’. Taking as a start point the success that the Ushahidi project had in tracking both Kenyan post election violence and war-time activity in the Gaza strip we speculated on what an autonomous app might look like, which ran on a smart phone applying a similar theme. Using the idea of unique sound signatures our app, in its first iteration, ‘listened’ for sounds to report them back to a central database. Sounds such as gunfire, military vehicle movement or even militia on horseback provide a unique signature, which could then be used to provide a much richer intelligence picture of events on the ground. Over time other sensors could be layered into the app to monitor the environment for chemical or biological agents or to provide rapid analysis of images. As a system we conceived of this as an open environment. As a quid pro quo for participation, the citizen has the option to subscribe to areas of local interest for feedback, planning and awareness.

Sabre wrote:Agreed, acoustic fingerprinting has gotten very good. Think about Shazam on the commercial side as a good reference!