Cash-poor local councils and developing countries don’t need huge budgets to obtain valuable, continuous environmental data to inform sustainable management policies, new research suggests.
Griffith University’s Dr Jarrod Trevathan and the University of Queensland’s Associate Professor Ron Johnstone are refining a wireless sensor network technology known as SEMAT (Smart Environmental Monitoring & Assessment Technologies) that measures the biological responses to changing environmental conditions.
Dr Trevathan said the SEMAT system used the existing GSM mobile phone network, enabling affordable remote monitoring across vast geographical areas previously almost impossible to reach with other network technologies.
“Data is transferred in near real-time to a cloud-based server and stored in a powerful back-end database management system,” Dr Trevathan said.
“Users can view the collected data in a simple and intuitive web-based user interface which allows them to download the data and also set alerts when certain key environmental conditions occur, such as conditions conducive to algal blooms.”
Dr Johnstone
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