This pan/tilt/zoomable camera atop Mount Laguna allows researchers to examine environmental conditions in real-time.
The recently installed meteorological sensors encompass an ultrasonic 3D anemometer, a tipping rain bucket, temperature and relative humidity gauges, a barometric pressure gauge, a solar radiation monitor, as well as fuel moisture and temperature gauges.
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September 24, 2002
San Diego County Sheriff's Department, UCSD, SDSU, and SSC-San Diego Researchers Collaborate for Real-Time Sensor Telemetry Instrumentation Atop Laguna Mountains
Earlier this month, the HPWREN team participated in an activity that instrumented a Mount Laguna wireless communications facility with several real-time data sensors. Specifically, researchers affiliated with UCSD's HPWREN and ROADNet, SDSU's Field Stations Program, and SSC-San Diego's Crisis/Consequence Management Initiative deployed nine sensors that will allow for real-time environmental monitoring.
"Administrators of the Sheriff's Department managed Regional Communications System believe that the HPWREN sensor project may eventually lead to the development of more widespread wireless technology in mountainous East County areas that will assist in general public safety tasks such as search and rescue missions and the prevention and containment of wildland fires," says Curt Munro, manager of the San Diego Sheriff's Department's Wireless Services Unit and Regional Communications System.
"The deployment of meteorological sensors and imaging equipment throughout the county's backcountry and remote mountaintops, coupled with real-time access and a user-friendly web interface, will aid in the understanding of weather patterns and help refine meteorological models," explains Pablo Bryant, SDSU Field Stations Program research technologist.
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Data collected by these sensors now stream via HPWREN from a Mount Laguna mountaintop to the San Diego Supercomputer Center and can then be made accessible to desktops throughout the world. To make sense of the raw sensor data, ROADNet researchers have created a data storage system and user-friendly interface that allows for easy access to the real-time information.
"We have extended direct connectivity through the Internet to individual environmental sensors," said John Orcutt, the principal investigator for ROADNet. "This easy access to a wide variety of data over wireless networks in real-time is a real revolution in the environmental sciences."
This activity would not have been possible without the cooperation and support from the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, which has provided HPWREN researchers with access to several of their wireless communications facilities.
HPWREN researchers Jim Hale and Bud Hale install the IP-accessible real-time video camera, which has multiple capabilities such as pan, tilt, and zoom.
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"As part of our National Science Foundation funded project, we would like to stimulate a vision of high performance ubiquitous data networking," says HPWREN principal investigator Hans-Werner Braun. "As such, we are collaborating with various agencies on demonstrating various values that can be supported by real-time data networking, examples of which being sensor networks and an ability to rapidly deploy 'anywhere' ad-hoc networks."
Hal Holmerud, Outreach Administrator for the Crisis/Consequence Management Initiative at SSC-San Diego, helped facilitate the recent sensor instrumentation activity.
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"In addition to this work with SSC-San Diego and the Sheriff's Department, we are also working with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) and most recently connected their Red Mountain Fire Station to HPWREN," says Braun. "We hope this month's sensor instrumentation on Mount Laguna will be useful to the CDF, and also plan to use it as a prototype for future collaborations."
A collage illustrating the installed sensors is located at https://www.hpwren.ucsd.edu/news/images/020924_big.jpg.
Additional photos regarding this activity are available at https://cdn.hpwren.ucsd.edu/images/20020910/ and https://cdn.hpwren.ucsd.edu/images/20020906/.
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