HydroWatch - Following the Life Cycle of Water

In California, the word 'drought' has been thrown around more this year than I can ever remember. According to the California Department of Water Resources, the 2007 water year is on track to be one of the driest precipitation years on record in California history. This new development will soon affect all of us. In August, officials stated that they will cut water to Southern California farmers 30% by early next year and are drafting plans that could force residential water rationing for the first time in more than a decade. Our water supply is a commodity that we can not live without. Understanding and managing this resource is becoming a growing concern not only in California, but around the world.

Researchers at the Berkeley Institute of the Environment have taken the initiative to do what they can to understand and create solutions to help the future of the planet. Specifically, the HydroWatch project is designing a new framework for quantifying the incredibly complex pathways of water. By designing advanced new sensors that can monitor water above, within, and below plant canopies as well as in soils and streams, the team has a prototype system that can readily be replicated to investigate the effects of climate change and urban development on freshwater supply. The data they can gather will help to inform public policy and planning frameworks for California and beyond.

For most people, all we care to know is whether water will come out of the faucet when we turn the knob, but with the rapid pace of global warming, this may not always be true! In an effort to understand the complete life cycle of water, the researchers at HydroWatch hope to predict droughts, floods and water supply. By tracking water through the atmosphere, trees, soil, streams, oceans and back into the skies the data will provide better climate models for scientists and researchers. Inez Fung, a professor of earth and planetary science and of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley, is the co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment. As she noted, researchers have discovered that only 30-50% of the rain that falls on the Amazon comes from the ocean, the rest comes from recycled precipitation of the previous year. This type data would be integrated into a computer model incorporating atmospheric, surface and below ground variations of the life cycle of water serving as a benchmark for broader studies worldwide.

The HydroWatch center has deployed systems at two watersheds within the UC Natural Reserve System to set out water monitors that will send researchers real-time data on rain, air moisture, soil water content and stream flow via a wireless network and satellite uplink. This information combined with data on temperature, pressure and humidity will come from wireless sensor motes that will be placed in the tops of trees, embedded in the ground or scattered around the water shed. Before sensor networks, most environmental data was collected from small local areas infrequently, while wireless sensor networks allow data to be collected both at a higher frequency and over large spatial extents. These motes self-assemble into a wireless network that sends data to the UC Berkeley laboratories. The two California watersheds are along Elder Creek in the Angelo Coast Range Reserve and at the Sagehen Creek Field Station on the South Fork of the Eel River 20 miles north of Lake Tahoe. Other information will come from rain monitors that can chemically analyze the samples to determine where water fell and the particular area it originated from. As Fung states, "We have to plan for change in the water supply because of climate change and human actions." HydroWatch aims to track the Earth's hidden water and monitor the visible sources more intensely. The climate models and water life cycle data this project develops and collects will help to predict changes in California's water cycle and help the public be prepared for the impacts on California's economy should drought become something very real to all of us.

ResponSphere - Infrastructure for the Unexpected

Airborne High Resolution Imagery to Aid San Diego Fire Control

This blog is focused on the wide range of solutions to real-life problems that can be addressed with Crossbow's wireless sensor network products. This particular posting will focus on the other side of our business - our inertial systems.

This past weekend I headed down to Southern California to visit some family and friends and was sad to see the cloudy cover of smoke and haze still left from the horrible fires that destroyed hundreds of Southern California homes and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee. Final figures being reported say that 1500 homes were destroyed and over 500,000 acres of land burned from Santa Barbara County to the US-Mexico border. Governor Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency as over 6000 firemen worked to fight the blazes. The major contributing factors to the extreme fire conditions were the drought in Southern California, hot weather, and unusually strong Santa Ana winds with gusts reaching 85 mph (140 km/h). Besides the reduced air quality visible this past weekend, we were relieved to find our family and friends out of harms way. However, I was interested to hear how one of Crossbow's customers, NEOS, Ltd. did their part to contribute to the containment and recovery of the areas consumed by the fires.

San Diego County was the location of the two biggest fires by area burned. The fires forced the largest evacuation in the region's history. NEOS, Ltd. had been contracted by Homeland Security, Google Earth and Border Patrol to begin high resolution aerial surveillance of the fire impact zones in San Diego County. Specifically NEOS, Ltd provided 6' to 1' resolution RGB imagery with DGPS and IMU data that was posted daily on Google Earth. The NEOS aircraft was chosen because of its low altitude forensic capability, short data turn-around and high data quality. It filled in details for the daily Predator and MODIS satellite coverage received at the command center located at San Diego State University.

NEOS - Near Earth Observation Systems used Crossbow's NAV440 GPS-Aided MEMS inertial system on their GT-500 to overfly the San Diego fire zones and provide airborne imagery. The NAV440 was used to improve the accuracy and quality of the images that were used to help in the effort to identify and contain the fires and set up fire defense lines. The NAV440 was able to report the exact position of the aircraft and aiming orientation of the camera. The NEOS system is designed to provide dynamic situational intelligence. The image shows the flight track of the system aircraft flown by NEOS as logged on Google Earth. The second photo shows a damage example and the level of detail obtained from a 10 mega pixel imaging system that can collect over 3,000 images per hour under high clouds, smoke and haze.

Crossbow's NAV440 is a combined GPS Navigation and GPS-Aided Attitude and Heading Reference system (AHRS) that utilizes both MEMS-based inertial sensors and GPS technology. In conjunction with the survey and terrain mapping services and remote sensing that NEOS, Ltd. provides with their GT500 aircraft, the geographic information extraction this solution provides can aid in efforts ranging from disaster recovery, intrusion identification, national security, etc. by providing timely and accurate information for tactical and strategic response to these scenarios. As a California resident, I was proud to see the ways Crossbow technology can be used to aid in recovery. Our prayers for peace, consolation and safety go out to our neighbors affected by these fires.