One of our developers, Corey Wallis, is in the midst of a project with some of the other researchers in the Flinders University Disaster Research Centre (DRC) where they are creating a system to acquire temperature and humidity data from mass gathering events, such as concerts and sports events.
This involves both fixed and mobile devices with sensors continuously collecting data for analysis both at the event and on-line.
One of the tricks is that we can't rely on cellular service being available at these events. Also, we want all of the field teams who are gathering data to also be able to visualise and act on the data, so we need a many-to-many distribution scheme.
These features make it an good fit for Serval Rhizome, our store-and-forward/Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) system, that is able to handle both of these requirements, and will result in a very versatile system that can be used anywhere in the world.
Corey has made some good progress on the hardware and software for the data gathering, as can be seen in this blog post:
http://magdaaproject.org/2012/10/08/mobile-environment-monitoring-software-update/
Among the next steps are to actually integrate it with the Serval Mesh software so that the data can be shared among the field teams and analysis staff.
Environmental monitoring describes the processes that need to take place to characterize and monitor the quality of the environment. Environmental monitoring is conducted on soil, water and air samples. Plants and animals are also commonly tested. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteEnvironmental Monitoring
Hi,
DeleteIt isn't just meteorological conditions that we are interested in collecting. While it is true that the initial prototype sensors are only temperature and relative humidity, we have plans to incorporate additional sensors into our sensor modules, and to the network as a whole. These sensors including a measurement of light, decibel metering, and air quality.
Our focus is on the quality of the environment from the perspective of the audience / crowd participants as a way of seeing how the environment impacts on their behaviour. As such I believe the use of the term environment monitoring is accurate in this context.
Hello.
ReplyDeleteYou are quite right that environmental monitoring, as a technical term, is typically applied as you describe. What we are intending to do is to monitor the environmental conditions of human gatherings, and while this probably borders on meteorology observation, I think it is reasonable to describe the monitoring of environmental conditions as environmental monitoring. If there is a more precise term for what we are doing, I am happy to hear it and amend the post accordingly.
Paul.
I also forgot to mention, that while we are monitoring the environment at human gatherings, the tools we are creating can be used for environmental monitoring in other contexts, including exactly those you described, without the need for existing network infrastructure. It is just a case of switching the temperature and humidity sensors for others -- the network transport stays the same.
DeletePaul.