Take a deep breath. The air you just inhaled might contain trace amounts of nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, suspended particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, ozone, radioactive radon, and other toxic substances. According to the World Health Organization, one of every six people on the earth, or more than 1.1 billion people, lives in urban areas where the air is unhealthy to breathe. Air pollution has definitely become one of the most challenging environmental problems of the century.
If you think air pollution is the only environmental problem around you, think again. Each year, the equivalent of approximately 10,000 million tons of coal is consumed on earth as energy. About 40% from this is based on oil and together with coal and natural gas more than 90% of the total energy consumption result from carbon atoms in these fossil fuels. The consequence will be a global warming (greenhouse effect) and a great reduction of renewable resources in the future. In reality, most of the energy we produce is wasted through heat loss and power inefficiencies. Integral to reducing environmental impact is a method of monitoring power consumption and reducing energy waste.
Software Implementation
Microsoft XML web services would provide a robust yet flexible network of environmental sensors. Possible sensors are AC current, temperature, humidity, light, sound, carbon dioxide and monoxide, and motion. Users can acquire any sensor data by connecting to any one of the nodes in the network. The network can be configured and programmed using customized rules. Different actions can be scheduled to happen once certain environmental conditions are met in the targeted environment. Microsoft SQL Server would be used to store sensor position and configuration information as well as sensor data for future study and analysis. Mobile phone users would be able to access sensor data as well as control environment remotely through a .NET device application developed on .NET Compact Framework.
Figure 1: Possible configuration for Reactivity in an enterprise environment
Applications
In addition to energy reduction in urban environments, increased benefits of a distributed sensing networks model is realized in the ability to log, analyze, and visualize data to find patterns in natural setting. By deploying cheap, low-maintenance, and modular sensor systems, data can be gathered from virtually any environment and collected via wireless network. Power in natural environments can be provided by miniature solar panels on the device.
Distributed sensing has the potential to accelerate advancements in the visualization of our environmental impact. Regions with sensor networks can be monitored continuously for light and air pollution creating extensive data logs. Visualization of environmental data can reveal distributions of environmental variables; these are keys to understanding how the environment is changing and getting feedback on energy reduction methods.
Hundreds of species of plants and animals are losing their environments to human environmental displacements. Real-time monitoring of environmental conditions could be crucial in determining what factors are affecting species decline. Ruggedized versions can be deployed in hostile conditions such as forests and aquatic environments. Due to low cost, sensors can be blanketed throughout spaces.
Team Members
Adam Risi, Zachery Shivers and Ziyan Zhou. Visit our team page for more information.
At this point, the project is completely open source and made public.
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