Applications of Technology for Tackling Environmental Issues

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Applications of Technology for Tackling
Environmental Issues

• CEDT Experience

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Applications of Technology for Tackling
Environmental Issues

• Modern Technology Owes Ecology an Apology Alan
  M. Eddison
• For 200 years we've been conquering Nature.  Now
  we're beating it to death.  Tom McMillan,
  quoted in Francesca Lyman, The Greenhouse Trap,
  1990
• Modern Technology Owes Ecology a Positive
  Contribution CEDT

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Areas in Tackling Environmental Issues

• Monitoring and surveillance
• Management
• Integration of environment awareness in all human
  activities

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MDG Environment and Human Wellbeing A practical
Strategy (2005)

• Improve Small Scale Agricultural Systems
• Promote Forest Management for protection and
  sustainable production
• Combat threats to fresh water resources and
  ecosystems causing water scarcity in dry areas
  and flooding in wet ones, and pollution and
  salinization
• Address the drivers of air and water pollution
• Promote Science and Technology for environmental
  sustainability, and expand the use of scientific
  and indigenous knowledge related to environmental
  management by policy makers and the general public

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8 Technologies for a Green Future

• Environmental sensor networks
• Call it the networked environment. Picture tiny
  - we're talking small as a dime - wireless
  sensors lining lake beds and ocean floors, buried
  in the ground, and floating in the air. All the
  time sniffing the air, water, and soil for
  chemicals and pollutants and detecting changes in
  temperature and pressure
• CNN 7 March 07

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Technology for Environment
Wireless Sensor NW
Connectivity
Power Sources
Servers
Low-cost Computing
Disaster management
Agricultural production
Pollution monitoring
Water resources
Wildlife management
Forest management
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Present scenario

• Plenty of theory
• Inadequate deployment experience
• Expensive platform
• Scalability

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Areas at CEDT

• Use of standard platforms cell phone,
  inexpensive nodes
• New inexpensive platforms
• Inexpensive sensors
• Deployment for specific applications

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Examples of Technology applications

• CEDT Experience

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COMMONSENSE Community based Management Of
Natural resources through Sensor Networks

• Focused on Agriculture

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A Joint project between EPFL and IISc

• On use of technology for development

Channakeshava Trust
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Problem in semi arid area agriculture

• Land holdings largely by marginal farmers Farms
  less than 1 hectare
• Rain fed agriculture No support irrigation
• Uncertain crop yields
• Livelihood uncertain

Can technology help the situation?
We hope so! Wireless Sensor Network and ICT could
help tackle this problem.
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Semi arid regions
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Difference with water availability
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Project Vision

• Focus on
• Semi-arid region
• Resource-poor population
• Use wireless sensor network to collect parameters
  for agriculture
• Process collected data to give relevant
  information to farmers

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Project Mission

• Design and implement an information system for
  agriculture that is
• Focused on water use
• Affordable
• Reliable
• Scalable
• Replicable

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Disciplines and Agencies

• Agriculture
• University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore
• Society and Natural Resources
• Channakeshava trust, NGO
• Water Resources
• HYDRAM, EPFL
• Wireless Sensor Network and ICT
• Department of Communication Systems, EPFL
• CEDT, IISc, Bangalore

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Project Details

• To cover selected farms over 2000 km2
• Project duration June 2004 to June 2008
• Main crops covered
• Groundnut Rainfed (90 crop area)
• Pulses Rainfed
• Areca nut Irrigated
• Rice Irrigated
• Finger millet Irrigated

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Project site
CK Pura Pavagada
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Project methodology

• User survey
• Design of the technical solution
• Pilot deployment
• Scaling
• Collection of data from the field
• Giving processed data to farmers
• Interacting with agronomy experts with data

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User survey

• Conducted in 4 phases
• Collecting back ground information about the
  village
• Group discussion with user groups
• Personal interviews with small groups
• Prioritization and endorsement with user groups

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User groups

• Information needs are closely linked to livelihood

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End-user requirements

• Surveyed 3 villages of about 300 families

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Important parameters to be measured
Rain fall
Temperature, humidity, Insolation, wind velocity
Soil Moisture content, salinity
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Other uses of the network

• Get local meteorological data Like evaporation
  rate, through computation
• Get global meteorological data from
  meteorological department though the web
• Monitor and integrate ground water data
• Provide for real time tele-diagnostics
• Pests and pathogens of crops and farm animals
  through picture and speech transmission

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System Specifications

• Real-time data collection and processing
• Extensive off-line data processing to get
  meaningful information from field data
• Data storage
• Display relevant information Pest and disease
  incidence, soil moisture, ground water levels
• Multilingual and graphics interface
• Interface network with handheld devices

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System Interconnection
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Deployment Concept
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Deployment at CK Pura
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Characteristics of Deployed System

• Low data-rate A few KBPS
• Easy to scale
• Failure detection and fault tolerance
• Internet connectivity and web-based interface
• Self-organizing network for ease of deployment
  and non-intrusiveness

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In the field
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Typical measurement
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Problems so far

• Frequent power outages
• Field maintenance more than expected
• Drawing power from 11 KV power network for the
  backbone network 10 Watts
• Expensive soil moisture probe
• Complete temporary dysfunction of sensor nodes
• Some theft due to incorrect perception of the
  project by users

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Major Challenges

• User related
• Involving and integrating users into the project
• Tamper proofing
• Technology related
• Stabilizing the deployment
• Reducing energy consumption for long life
• Locating sensors optimally
• Extending communication range
• Reducing deployment cost
• Agriculture related
• Applying decision models to the data
• Scaling

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Conclusions

• Deployed WSN in rural setting for the first time
  in the world
• Established successfully a functional
  multidisciplinary group between India and
  Switzerland
• Beginning to understand rural deployment
  realities of high-tech products

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Conclusions.continued

• Further understanding and solving problems of
  deployment of high-tech infrastructure in rural
  settings
• Solving many challenging technical and social
  issues
• Proposing projects to Media Lab Asia, DST, and
  SDC for scaling the present project

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An ALL mobile vehicle

• A Research Platform

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Objectives

• In an Electric or a hybrid vehicle implement
  various subsystems to
• Make the vehicle environment aware
• Manage vehicle navigation
• Manage power
• Monitor and actuate remotely
• Provide infrastructure for networking wirelessly
• Provide extensive instrumentation for gathering
  field data from vehicle and environment
• Allow subsystem selection for a given vertical
  (application) of the vehicle (like a custom made
  DELL computer!)

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Intended applications

• Research
• Trying out various WSN, Wifi networks for a
  variety of applications
• Delay tolerant networks
• Data collection
• Distribution of critical materials (life saving
  drugs, seeds, .)
• Trying out various DSP for building subsystems
• Some application domains with rural bias
• Health care
• E-services
• Disaster management
• Mobile infotainment
• Agriculture
• Security Integration of vehicle and home
  security
• Autonomous vehicle
• .

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Research Vehicle Matrix
Power system
Communication networking
On-board Computing
Environment Sensors
Instrumentation
Security system
Autonomous Vehicle
Disaster management
Mobile infotainment
Health Care
E-services
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The Vehicle platform

• An electric car or a hybrid car
• Example Reva or Toyota Prius
• A hybrid or an electric three wheeler
• An Electric two wheeler
• A CNG bus

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The Reva
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Typical mobile vehicles
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Power Source

• Storage for running the electronic system for 24
  hours
• Multi-port source by PV panel, mains power, and
  the generator in the vehicle
• Outlets for operating standard devices like
  laptop, video cameras, electro-medical devices.
• Charger for mobile phones, laptops, other
  electronic gadgets
• Battery management for optimal use

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Communication System

• Wifi access point to act as a local hub and
  connection to a wired LAN
• Wireless Sensor Network
• Ability to connect to a high speed LAN, CDMA,
  GPRS, and dial-up lines
• VSAT
• FM transmitter
• AM, FM radio receivers
• TV tuner
• DTH TV

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Computer system

• Server in the vehicle
• Connected thorough Wifi to Internet
• Data collection from sensors
• Data processing like compression
• Store-and-forward service of messages
• Data streaming for mobile broadcast
• DLP unit

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Environmental sensors

• Weather monitoring system
• Network presence detectors
• Digital cameras in front and back
• GPS receiver
• Smoke and dust detectors
• Ultrasonic distance measuring device

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Applications (Verticals)

• Mobile healthcare
• Mobile broadcaster
• Mobile e-service provider
• Mobile disaster management
• Mobile e-post service
• .

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Health Care Example

• Carry health care equipment (like ultra sound
  scanners, ECG,..)
• Digital data from the equipment stored, and
  processed
• Opportunistically transmitted to a primary health
  care centre
• Diagnosed results uploaded opportunistically
• Offered as a high quality and low cost service

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Typical mobile health care vehicle

• Integrates
• ECG
• Intubing
• Emergency operations
• Many other functionalities

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E-service provider example

• Carry and deliver documents of local relevance
  (land records, weather data, prices of
  commodities, various application forms,..)
• Use opportunistic network for email collection
  and delivery
• Carry voice and video messages using
  opportunistic network
• Provide print services
• Provide high quality photography service
• .

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Forest and Farm Management System

• Networking Forests

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Forest Management system

• A well connected network and data base to offer
  information on an integrated basis
• Free information
• Maps, fauna and flora, interesting info,
  photographs, blogs, .
• Restricted information
• Details of the forests quantitative details
• Resource utilization patterns
• Management Information system
• Deployment of forest staff and monitoring their
  activities
• Forest development activities projects, budgets,
  timelines
• Information for action
• Human-Animal conflicts
• Anti-poaching Animals and plants
• Forest fire prevention
• Controlled forest resource usage

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Forest network

• Wifi network to cover the forest
• WSN to add sensors
• GPS, simple accelerometers to sense movement of
  personnel, animal detectors, vehicle detectors,
  cameras.
• Node to connect thorough high speed dial-up or
  GPRS (EDGE)
• Network to support VOIP calls on WSN handheld
  nodes
• Power back up for 24 hrs for all Wifi nodes

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A National Park Area
Aggregation Node
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Camera trap picture is forests
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Aggregation Node

• Aggregation of data from the network
• WAN communication node
• Service provider
• Communications
• Alerts
• Data collection
• Data transmission
• Node of the Forest Network over a large area

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The FFM product

• Modular
• The management system software
• The Wifi network and its integration to the
  system
• The WSN and its integration to the system
• Remote monitoring and configuration of a network
  of forests or farms

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Conclusion

• Environment needs special attention from
  technologists
• WSN and other IT technologies are useful in many
  applications in environment management
• Will mature into a market Till then support for
  development, deployment and demonstration needed
• Many new applications will emerge
• Most relevant and vibrant area for research