Peter Raven, in his recent address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, noted that urban populations are incredibly large, that they are growing more quickly than ever before, and that in only a few years our global civilization will have reached the unprecedented point where 65 cities will have populations of over five million people. He pointed out that if we cannot find new ways to increase the individual’s understanding of the natural systems that support us, the chances of our living productive and healthy lives will diminish. Raven’s words remind us that any urban system, must meet the challenge of connecting increasingly urbanized populations back to their environmental responsibilities. These systems must include ways of educating, enlightening, and engaging society by providing tools that progress knowledge about the world.

Lotus is an environmental sensor network that empowers citizens by giving them direct access to information about the state of their local, and global, marine environment

Water as key environmental indicator:

Water is one of the most significant and valuable environmental resources that we have. Despite this value, we do little to monitor the quality of water within the marine environments upon which our societies depend. This project proposes a method to improve the monitoring of wastewater so that individual citizens can better manage the environmental responsibilities that they have.

The notion that knowledge can be used to motivate social change is recognized within the US. Environmental Protection Agency’s January 1995 report which says: “A concerned, educated public acting through responsible local, national and international institutions will serve as effective agents for avoiding future environmental problems.”

Lotus is designed to realize the EPA’s vision. We have chosen to monitor the water as a key environmental indicator because:

1. Several recent several studies have shown that wastewater contaminated with domestic detergents, antibiotics, and hormones, have a direct impact upon local communities – often posing significant but preventable problems for the attainment of safe local water.
2. Throughout history we have seen how the abuse of local water supplies quickly develop into significant regional and national environmental problems.
3. Despite the importance of water to our societies, we largely limit the monitoring of wastewater production to the industrial sector.
4. With recent improvements in sensing and information management technologies, water is an ideal natural resource to measure and monitor at the individual and community level.
5. This project encourages people to act locally while thinking globally. As all schoolchildren learn when studying the water cycle, water is simultaneously a local and global resource upon which the success of our civilization is based. Furthermore as cities grow in size local pressures transform into regional and national issues. See: UNEP Evolution of Water Supply and Wastewater Disposal, Brian Morris, British Geological Survey (figure 2).

Proposal:

To develop and implement a network of floating sensors that monitor the state of lakes, rivers, estuaries, seas or oceans around the globe, and ensure that they are cheap to build and able to gather and disseminate real-time information via the internet to:

• children,
• educators,
• scientists,
• politicians,
• designers,
• engineers and
• curious citizens, from all countries – rich or poor

The network (figure 3) consists of four parts, three of which belong to the sensor network. The forth component is a public interface (shown in green - figure 3). Together each part forms a complete information collection and distribution service to provide free access to previously unavailable information about the state of the world’s water supplies. It is envisaged that the environmental sensor network be used as a tool by people around the world to conduct studies as well as broaden the ability of people to understand the natural systems in which they live.

Technical Components And Function:

To produce a robust and cost effective sensor that can withstand wear from environmental and handling (ie transportation) factors it is proposed that multiple sensing components be integrated into a floating chassis produced from lightweight durable plastics. The electronic components are to be low voltage and low cost so that sensor loss does not pose a major financial concern. The packaged sensor array should be produced for under $500 dollars. A schematic list of the necessary components of the sensors [a] as well as the storage [b], distribution [c] and data use [d] components are found below (figure 4). All technologies are conventional and can be purchased as off the shelf items.

Each sensor will be capable of recording water temperature, air temperature, air humidity, water chemical composition, water bacteria content, as well as levels of underwater and water born noise pollution.

After collecting this environmental information (figure 3), each sensor sends its data for storage and dissemination within a freely accessible database that individuals, children, curious citizens, educators, scientists, politicians, designers, engineers from all nations – developed, rich or poor – can access.

Expenditure:

Project expenditure is broken down into three focus areas the balance of each will change throughout the life of the project as sensors are commissioned and the data library increases in size:

1. Development Scheme: dedicated to building the sensor network across five years. (Year 1 = 85% developing sensor, secure server java application) (Year 2 = 60% costs drop and numbers increase, major purchases complete, most costs in manufacturing sensors) (Year 3 through 5 = 50% standard expenditure on production achieved)

   Funding Method: Individual sponsorship of sensors through donation. Manufacturing is expected to cost approximately $500 per sensor. Sensor purchasing donations would cover the cost of a sensor plus 3 years of sensor support (approximately $700).

2. Deployment Scheme: dedicated to deploying and collecting sensors from different locations at the beginning and end of water quality studies. (Year 1 = 15% costs for deploying prototypes and testing) (Year 2 = 25% first major community deployments) (Year 3 through 5 = 35% for successive deployments)
3. Maintenance Scheme: dedicated to continually maintain the database and general systems infrastructure. (Year 1 = 0%) (Year 2 = 15% maintenance) (Year 3 through 5 = 15% for successive maintenance)

Funding / Sponsorship:

The network will be funded by public and institutional grants and private sponsorship. Private sponsorship is expected to account for 70-80% of funding which will occur through the development of a sensor-purchasing/sponsorship scheme.

Sensors will be sold to existing scientific, educational, private and public organizations at a small profit to fund the development of the infrastructure required to disseminate information to the open, lotus network.

Currently several of leading research organizations rely upon the conversion of ships into large floating laboratories at significant cost. It is expected that these sensors will release the burden on ship conversion and, in the process reduce the cost of empirical scientific work.

Initial Development Team:

The Office For Robotic Architectural Media is an architectural technology office that specializes in the implementation of responsive technologies to produce high-tech systems that aim at limiting and reducing the impacts that urban systems have upon the natural environment.

If successful this proposal will fund the development of prototype sensors within an interdisciplinary team of experts.

Principle Investigator: Tristan d’Estree Sterk.

Future Development Via Sustainable Partnerships:

This proposal will aim to build sustainable partnerships with key centers of research excellence in marine environments and sustainable urban systems.

It is anticipated that a mix of money granted from this prize and external matching funds will be used to hire 2 PhD students at leading institutions to assistant in network development.