Sensing environmental change

 

Engineers have developed environmental sensors to gather air and water quality data from around the globe.

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A new international programme will develop pervasive environmental sensor networks to collect information on air and water quality and use this data to provide more accurate, real-time monitoring and modelling of the environment. The researchers from MIT and two Singaporean universities will start with a carefully managed urban area like Singapore.
 
The project called the Center for Environmental Sensing and Modeling (CENSAM) is a research component of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Centre (or SMART Centre), a joint project of MIT and the National Research Foundation of Singapore. They hope that the project will provide the most up to date data about the environment in areas as small as a building to as vast as the Earth’s biosphere. 

Environmental engineering

Professor Andrew Whittle of MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is head of the CENSAM research group, he said: “Our grand challenge is to build up expertise in the general areas of environmental sensing and modelling. Our longer term goal is to develop a model representation of the built and natural environment that will seamlessly transition from the micro-scale of a building to the macro-scale, say of the South China Sea East Asia region.”
 
A prototype of the sensor technology network is currently in operation monitoring the underground water distribution and the sewer pipes in Boston. The CENSAM research will fall into five areas in Singapore: the built and natural environment; urban hydrology and water supply; coastal environment; marine environment; and the development of ways to monitor and model the city’s urban environment.
 
The group will consist of about 15 MIT faculty members from civil and environmental engineering, mechanical engineering, architecture and earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, and researchers from the National University of Singapore, the Nanyang Technological Institute, the Singaporean Public Utilities Board, and other governmental agencies and companies.

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