[Editors] MIT CEE News: Continuous Environmental Monitoring

[Denise Brehm]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE	
THURSDAY, JAN. 31, 2008

Contact: Denise Brehm, MIT Civil & Environmental Engineering
Phone: 617-253-8069
Email: brehm at mit.edu

More info: http://censam.mit.edu

==========================================
New MIT Environmental Research Program Seeks to Monitor
Air and Water Quality Continually, Pervasively Around the Globe
==========================================

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Researchers from MIT and two
Singaporean universities met on January 24-25 for an
inaugural workshop to launch a bold new international
research program called CENSAM. The program will develop
pervasive environmental sensor networks to collect data on
parameters such as air and water quality from many
sources, and use this data to provide accurate, real-time
monitoring, modeling and control of the environment.

One of the first goals of the research group is to provide
proof of the feasibility of the concept in a carefully
managed urban area like Singapore. The greater hope is
that these concepts might one day be widely applied on
different scales to provide up-to-the-minute data about
the environment in areas as small as a building or as
large as the Earth’s biosphere.

CENSAM, the Center for Environmental Sensing and Modeling,
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 that was announced Jan. 23.

Professor Andrew Whittle of MIT’s Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering is head of the CENSAM research
group. Whittle and an initial group of about 15 MIT
faculty members from civil and environmental engineering,
mechanical engineering, architecture and earth,
atmospheric and planetary sciences will work with
researchers from the National University of Singapore, the
Nanyang Technological Institute, the Singaporean Public
Utilities Board, and other governmental agencies and
companies.

“Our grand challenge is to build up expertise in the
general areas of environmental sensing and modeling. 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,” said
Whittle, whose own expertise is in the underground
construction of urban environments. He has already
developed prototype sensor network technology to monitor
underground water distribution and sewer pipes in Boston.

CENSAM research will fall into five broad areas: the built
and natural environment; urban hydrology and water supply;
coastal environment; marine environment; and development of
ways to monitor and model Singapore’s urban environment.
The initial set of research projects are:

Built & Natural Environment
-Urban Airshed Modeling
-Interactions between the Built and Natural Environment

Urban Hydrology & Water Supply
-Chemical Sensors for AUVs
-Distributed Hydrologic Modeling and Data Assimilation
-Continuous Monitoring of Water Distribution Systems
-Cyberinfrastructure for CENSAM to Encourage Data Fusion
-Systems for Measuring Subsurface Chemical Fluxes

Coastal Environment
-Algorithms for Adaptive Sampling in Coastal Zone Environment
-Algorithms for Creation of Solid Models from AUV Sensing Systems
-Experimental and Theoretical Modeling of Sediment Clouds
-Coastal Environment and Sediment Transport

Marine Environment
-Feature Based Navigation for AUVs in Very Shallow Water
-MEMS Pressure Arrays for Near-Field Flow Patterns
-Guided Wave Optics for Flow-Sensing MEMS Arrays
-Free-Space Optics for AUV Navigation and Map Generation
-Algorithms for Adaptive Sampling in Coastal Zone Environment
-Algorithms for Creation of Solid Models from AUV Sensing Systems

Integrated Modeling of Singapore's Environment (iMOSE) Regional  
Atmospheric Modeling
-Island-Scale Boundary Layer Modeling
-Ocean Modeling and Data Assimilation
-Ocean-Atmospheric Modeling and Climate Scenarios
-Basin Hydrologic Modeling and Transport
-Environmental Impacts of Large Scale Biofuel Development in SE Asia

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Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 1-290
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Phone: 617-253-8069
http://cee.mit.edu/