Link to Smarter Plant blog:  Visualizing a Smarter City.

The Smarter City:

The strategy document – ‘Harnessing Ireland’s Potential as a European and Global Centre for Ocean Technology’ – was compiled by a working group comprised of representatives of ICT industry, research institutes and State agencies.

The working group has identified ocean innovation as a possible “game changer” for Ireland by focusing our existing ICT cluster and significant investments in science and technology on our 220m acre marine resource in order to leverage opportunities to develop new products and services for global markets…

Full Article: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/15640/

Fast Company points to IBM’s ability to manage complex information systems and increasing the flow of meaningful data to state and local governments, utilities, and manufacturers as reasons for IBM’s position on the list.

Full Article: http://www.fastcompany.com/mic/2010/profile/ibm

ABOUT The Autonomous Phosphate Sensor – Or THE “LUNCH BOX – LAB in BOX”

Background

• Environmental water pollution affects human health and reduces the quality of our natural water ecosystems and resources. As a result, there is great interest in monitoring water quality and ensuring that all areas are compliant with legislation.
• Ubiquitous water quality monitoring places considerable demands upon existing sensing technology. Combined the challenges of:

• system longevity
• autonomous operation
• robustness
• large-scale sensor networks
• operationally difficult deployments
• unpredictable environments

These collectively represents a technological barrier that has yet to be overcome.

• Ubiquitous sensing envisages many aspects of our environment being routinely sensed. This will result in data streams from a large variety of heterogeneous sources, which will often vary in their volume and accuracy.

The IBM challenge :To develop a networked sensing infrastructure that can support the effective capture, filtering, aggregation and analysis of such data. This will ultimately enable us to dynamically monitor and track the quality of our environment at remote multiple locations.

THE LUNCH BOX Research SOLUTION – mini lab in a box

An example of such a system is the phosphate sensor which has been developed at the CLARITY Centre, in Dublin City University (DCU)  and IBM. (details of how it works on next page)

The Microfluidic technology in the box provides a route to the development of miniaturised analytical instruments that could be deployed remotely, and operate autonomously over relatively long periods of time (months–years).

This sensing technology, is in combination with

• low power

• reliable wireless communications platforms
• can link the sensors and analytical devices to online databases and servers
• form the basis for extensive networks of autonomous analytical ‘stations’ or ‘nodes’ that will provide high quality information about key chemical parameters that determine the quality of our aquatic environment
• The system must also have sufficient intelligence to enable adaptive sampling regimes as well as accurate and efficient decision-making responses

FUTURE:

As in-situ deployments of sensor networks become more widespread and reliable, and satellite data becomes more widely available, information from each of these sources can complement and validate the other, leading to an increased ability to rapidly detect potentially harmful events, and to assess the impact of environmental pressures on scales ranging from small river catchments to the open ocean.

The Box

This project is based on the development of an autonomous sensor for monitoring phosphate in lake and river water in-situ.

The goal is to design, build and validate a sensor that is sensitive, low-power, low cost and, most importantly, robust.

To tackle these design challenges a new concept of discrete metered fluid injection was developed.

This concept combines robust solenoid metering pumps with a microfluidic lab-on-a-chip. Separate pumps can inject a precise volume of reagent and sample into the lab-on-a-chip.

The layout of the microchannels within the chip direct the flow from the pumps to achieve precise mixing and the subsequent presentation of the reacted sample to a spectrophotometer for an absorbance measurement.

This concept is scalable allowing pumps for dispensing calibration and cleaning solutions to be integrated into the design.

A prototype analyser [the LUNCH BOX]was built to validate this concept.

It is completely autonomous and self calibrating.

It contains enough reagent, calibration and cleaning solution to carry out 4000 phosphate assays.

The unit powered by a 12V lead-acid battery is equipped with a GSM modem to transmit data collected, thus allowing it to be deployed at a remote location.

Advantages

Sensitivity. In laboratory benchtop trials the sensor demonstrated a limit of detection of 0.3 mg/L phosphate and a linear range up to 5 mg/L.

Low power. Although the current draw of a solenoid is high, the duty cycle is short. The pumps used draw 330 mA for 1 second. Each time a pump is cycled it dispenses 20 uL.

Robustness. When validated against a commercially available phosphate monitor the prototype was capable of providing high quality data over period of almost 40 days at an hourly sample rate.

IBM centre of excellence in water management

Water Quality & Flooding

Sensor networks, smart metering and advanced computing and analytics are helping to ensure the flow of clean, plentiful water around the planet. In Ireland the IBM Centre of Excellence in Water management has worked on a number of innovative projects including SmartBay. Continuous real-time monitoring from a network of sensors can give us an early warning on possible problems and can give stake-holders enough information to take action.

IBM are monitoring and integrating data from various water quality sites throughout Ireland. During the recent flooding in Cork the release of water from the Inniscarra dam resulted in large amount of sediment being released. IBM has installed an autonomous real-time water quality sensor in the Inniscarra region. A snapshot of this rapid change in water quality can be seen in the graph below.

Rapid change in water quality! In Cork IBM are monitoring and classifying particles that fall into different categories, protozoas, spore-shaped and rod-shaped. In essence this graph shows the sensors particle count rise sharply which shows a rapid change in water quality. This occurred between 4am and 5am on November 20th.

Smarter planet involves integrating instruments and adding intelligence to this integration. As we sense more of the world software solutions like SmartBay allows us to integrate disparate sensor data to make more informed decisions.

Contacts: Jer Hayes [hayesjer@ie.ibm.com], Stephen Hearn [stehearn@ie.ibm.com], Warren Lynam [lynamwa@ie.ibm.com], Robert McCarthy[rjmccarthy@ie.ibm.com ].

Full Story: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/11/smart-water-technologies-to-be-a-163b-industry-by-2020.php

Date: Tuesday 24th November 2009.

Venue: Innovation Centre, Building Six, IBM Technology Campus, Dublin 15.

Register at : http://www-05.ibm.com/ie/events/sigma_green/index.html

Green Sigma is an end-to-end solution aimed at reducing energy usage, water usage, carbon emissions and waste generation throughout a company’s operations, which in turn will save it money.

Working together with An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland, the organizations are collecting and analyzing large amounts of complex environmental data from Ireland’s coastline and lakes on water quality, tides, weather forecasts and more. That information is then made easily available to the general public at an online portal, Splash. Currently live in Ireland with plans for global expansion, Splash has already benefited thousands of visitors from nearly 40 countries.

Full Story: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/28740.wss

The vision for SmartBay is a marine research infrastructure of sensors and computational technology interconnected across Galway Bay, which would collect and distribute information on coastal conditions, pollution levels and marine life. The monitoring services, delivered via the web and other devices, benefits tourism, fishing, aquaculture and the environment. The pilot, which includes a move from manual to instrumented data gathering, will allow researchers to deploy quicker reactions to the critical challenges of the bay, such as pollution, flooding, fishing stock levels, green-energy generation and the threats from climate change. through the application of knowledge,” said Dr Peter Heffernan, CEO, MII.

Full Story:  http://www.idaireland.com/news-media/featured-news/cloud-computing-meets-wat/index.xml