CUSP Urban Observatory

Through the novel use of observational and analytical techniques, the Urban Observatory at New York University’s Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP-UO) studies the complex interactions between the physical, natural, and human components of the city as a coherent, definable system with the goal of enhancing public well-being, city operations, and future urban plans. With our persistent, synoptic imaging and sensing of NYC, researchers at the CUSP-UO are developing insights into energy use and stresses on the power grid, measuring the environmental impact of cities on air quality, and characterizing how urban centers affect patterns of daily life and public health.

For more information, see the Urban Observatory System paper

People

CUSP-UO Core Team

Foued Aouchette Lab Operations Manager NYU-CUSP	Gregory Dobler Associate Professor University of Delaware	Andy Karpf Project Manager NYU-CUSP
Debra Laefer Professor NYU-CUSP	Jessica Salcido PhD Student NYU-CUSP	Vinayak Saxena Research Scientist NYU-CUSP
Anamika Shreevastava Assistant Professor NYU-CUSP

Affiliated Researchers

Federica Bianco Associate Professor University of Delaware

Maurizio Porfiri CUSP Director NYU-CUSP

Mohit Sharma Research Scientist

Research Projects

Energy

Imaging a city night skyline at different time scales we create models of energy consumption and electrical grid dynamics. Seconds-scale images provide insight into occupancy and activity patterns. Subsecond (hypertemporal) imaging of the same scene can reveal the phase of the electrical grid granular to individual housing units. Spectral wavelength imaging reveals the lighting technologies used in NYC (hyperspectral)

Broad Band Visible imaging of energy proxies
Hypertemporal imaging of energy
Rebound studies through hyperspectral imaging
Infrared building dynamics

Environment

Time-dependent visible wavelength imaging is used to identify soot plumes ejected from NYC buildings and track them as they are transported by urban winds. Hyperspectral imagery yields both the chemical content and concentration of those plumes, providing a unique method to measure air quality in NYC. Observations of chlorophyll in urban vegetation are correlated with data from in situ air quality sensors to measure the impact of urban energy use on vegetation. Nighttime imaging of the skyline is correlated with radar and volunteer data to study impacts of urban lighting on migrating bird ecologies.

Ecological impact of urban lighting
Visible and hyperspectral plumes
Vegetative health
Water vapor and latent heat detection

Human Factors

Using both remote and street-level imaging systems, we are quantifying patterns of life related to human mobility, determining technology adoption and usage characteristics, developing surrogate metrics for traffic safety, and measuring the public health impacts of light pollution via circadian disruption.

Light pollution and circadian phase delay
Rebound studies
Technology penetration
Time-dependent foot traffic
Surrogate traffic safety measures

2026

Yu, Lan, Manz, Mary, Sharma, Mohit S, Karpf, Andreas, Bianco, Federica B and Dobler, Gregory, An emperical measurement of lighting technology changeover in new york city with deep learning, Remote Sensing, 2026

2023

Qamar, Farid and Dobler, Gregory, Atmospheric correction of vegetation reflectance with simulation-trained deep learning for ground-based hyperspectral remote sensing, Plant Methods 19, 74, 2023

2022

Qamar, Farid, Sharma, Mohit S and Dobler, Gregory, The impacts of air quality on vegetation health in dense urban environments: a ground-based hyperspectral imaging approach, Remote Sensing 14, 3854, 2022

Dumont, Vincent, Bowen, Trevor A, Roglans, Roger, Dobler, Gregory, Sharma, Mohit S, Karpf, Andy, Bale, Stuart D, Wickenbrock, Arne, Zhivun, Elena, Kornack, Tom and others, Do cities have a unique magnetic pulse?, Journal of Applied Physics 131, 2022

2021

Dobler, Gregory, Bianco, Federica B, Sharma, Mohit S, Karpf, Andreas, Baur, Julien, Ghandehari, Masoud, Wurtele, Jonathan and Koonin, Steven E, The urban observatory: a multi-modal imaging platform for the study of dynamics in complex urban systems, Remote sensing 13, 1426, 2021

Qamar, Farid, Gómez-Fonseca, Angie S and Dobler, Gregory, The effects of atmospheric modeling covariance on ground-based hyperspectral measurements of surface reflectance, 1-5, 2021

Dobler, Gregory, Vani, Jordan and Dam, Trang Tran Linh, Patterns of urban foot traffic dynamics, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 89, 101674, 2021

Arjunan, Pandarasamy, Dobler, Gregory, Lee, Kyungmin, Miller, Clayton, Biljecki, Filip and Poolla, Kameshwar, Operational characteristics of residential air conditioners with temporally granular remote thermographic imaging, 184-187, 2021

2020

Qamar, Farid and Dobler, Gregory, Pixel-wise classification of high-resolution ground-based urban hyperspectral images with convolutional neural networks, Remote Sensing 12, 2540, 2020

2019

Li, Chenge, Dobler, Gregory, Feng, Xin and Wang, Yao, Tracknet: simultaneous object detection and tracking and its application in traffic video analysis, arXiv preprint arXiv:1902.01466, 2019

Bowen, Trevor A, Zhivun, Elena, Wickenbrock, Arne, Dumont, Vincent, Bale, Stuart D, Pankow, Christopher, Dobler, Gregory, Wurtele, Jonathan S and Budker, Dmitry, A network of magnetometers for multi-scale urban science and informatics, Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems 8, 129-138, 2019

2018

Baur, Julien, Dobler, Gregory, Bianco, Federica, Sharma, Mohit and Karpf, Andreas, Persistent hyperspectral observations of the urban lightscape, 983-987, 2018

2017

Ghandehari, Masoud, Aghamohamadnia, Milad, Dobler, Gregory, Karpf, Andreas, Buckland, Kerry, Qian, Jun and Koonin, Steven, Mapping refrigerant gases in the new york city skyline, Scientific reports 7, 2735, 2017

Johnson, Nicholas E, Ianiuk, Olga, Cazap, Daniel, Liu, Linglan, Starobin, Daniel, Dobler, Gregory and Ghandehari, Masoud, Patterns of waste generation: a gradient boosting model for short-term waste prediction in new york city, Waste Management 62, 3-11, 2017

Bowen, TA, Zhivun, E, Wickenbrock, A, Dumont, V, Bale, SD, Pankow, C, Dobler, G, Wurtele, JS and Budker, D, Network of sensitive magnetometers for urban studies, arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.01468, 2017

2016

Li, C, Chiang, A, Dobler, Gregory, Wang, Y, Xie, Kun, Ozbay, Kaan, Ghandehari, Masoud, Zhou, J and Wang, D, Robust vehicle tracking for urban traffic videos at intersections, 207-213, 2016

Xie, Kun, Li, Chenge, Ozbay, Kaan, Dobler, Gregory, Yang, Hong, Chiang, An-Ti and Ghandehari, Masoud, Development of a comprehensive framework for video-based safety assessment, 2638-2643, 2016

Dobler, Gregory, Ghandehari, Masoud, Koonin, Steven E and Sharma, Mohit S, A hyperspectral survey of new york city lighting technology, Sensors 16, 2047, 2016

Ghandehari, Masoud, Aghamohamadnia, Milad, Dobler, Gregory, Karpf, Andreas, Cavalcante, Camila, Buckland, Kerry, Qian, Jun and Koonin, Steven, Ground based hyperspectral imaging of urban emissions, 1-3, 2016

Bianco, Federica B, Koonin, Steven E, Mydlarz, Charlie and Sharma, Mohit S, Hypertemporal imaging of nyc grid dynamics: short paper, 61-64, 2016

2015

Dobler, Gregory, Ghandehari, Masoud, Koonin, Steven E, Nazari, Rouzbeh, Patrinos, Aristides, Sharma, Mohit S, Tafvizi, Arya, Vo, Huy T and Wurtele, Jonathan S, Dynamics of the urban lightscape, Information Systems 54, 115-126, 2015

2014

Koonin, Steven E, Dobler, Gregory and Wurtele, Jonathan S, Urban physics, APS News 23, 2014

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