MIT Has a Clever Way to Map Streetlights

For many neighborhoods across the U.S., streetlights are reminders of the nation’s aging infrastructure. Some have been around for decades, which means frequent breakdowns due to outdated technology that can cost cities millions—money that isn’t always in the budget. The result: slow response times for outages and repairs that have left residents in the dark for weeks, months, and even years.

Cities have gradually started replacing high-pressure lightbulbs with the more energy-efficient and lower-maintenance LED alternatives, but as a team of MIT researchers argue, it’s not only the bulbs that are outdated. “Oddly, the science of streetlight placement is relatively primitive today, and the means to monitor how much light reaches the street are very limited,” Sumeet Kumar, a graduate of MIT, and his colleagues wrote in a recent paper published in the IEEE Sensors Journal.