M2C TECHNOLOGY AND VisCMSE SOFTWARE FOR ENVIRONMENT MONITORING

 

As it is defined in Kyoto Accord, the participating countries have to establish reliable system of monitoring the greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric pollution. The countries that underused their preset emission limits will be rewarded, while the countries that overuse it will be punished financially. This financial liability creates completely new demand for accurate and reliable environment monitoring and emission control systems, that will be operated by the government officials. Meanwhile, environment monitoring was one of the key areas of application for which M2C technology was developed.

The environment monitoring application implements integrated end-to-end environment monitoring system that can operate the network of the local sensors data, use aerial and satellite images, streaming media and existing geoinformation data, if available.

Current implementation focuses on radiation monitoring, and includes several radiation sensors, local municipality and aerial map. For the simplified testing the system is outfitted with hardware simulators, that are incorporated into the hardware drivers for scintilators and dosimeters which form two sensor networks within the system. The editing tools that are provided with the system allow to convert this application into environment monitoring system that addresses another tasks and another region, or to generate several regional applications. The system combines monitoring, analysis, data distribution and command capabilities and is suitable for operation by emergency response managers, government control and enforcement officers, and researchers in the areas of environment science, wild life monitoring, etc., does not require special computer programming training and is designed to be operational by computer-literate individual.

Considering the fact that European Union is firmly determined to implement Kyoto Accord we believe that systems like this have a great future.

System Functionality
The system can be configured to support the following functions: 

• Space monitoring

• Local and small area spectral analysis for multispectral images

• Change detection and monitoring

• Ground surface conditions monitoring

• Creation of thematic maps using satellite images

• Detection of the polluted areas, oil slicks (for water resources) and smoke

• Local sensor-based monitoring

• Monitoring of the status of the atmosphere pollution using local sensors, individual or networked

• Monitoring of the water quality Monitoring of specific pollutants concentration Monitoring of specific polluters

• Data trending and warning issuance for specific gaseous or liquid agents, smog, etc.

• Wind sensor monitoring

• Humidity, temperature and deviation point monitoring and trending

• Smog conditions monitoring and prediction

• Commanding the remote sensors (individually or clustered)

• Visual monitoring

• Visual data feed from the critical monitored objects (industrial enterprises, ports, busy street intersections, etc.), to improve situation analysis capability

Decision support
The system will analyze “raw” sensor or space monitoring data, trend them and generate recommendations, which will indicate the areas that fall within or are approaching to the preset limits of concentration of specific pollutant. Data may be presented as charts, paper reports or electronic reports.

Notification
The system will be set to issue automated email notification to preset list of recipients if one or more parameters of atmosphere, water or soil cover approaches to the value that may pose environment-related concern, or if steep change (indicator of the spill or leak) of any of the monitored parameters is detected. The notification format may be preset and may include location and other data. The system will maintain and regularly (several times per hour) update restricted access or public website, which will reflect the most current environment conditions and sensor readings.

Reporting
The system will generate (if requested) paper or electronic reports according to the customer’s specifications. Historic data The system will maintain full set of historic data for predetermined period of time. Operations support The system will allow exploring “what if” scenarios for response operations within the same application and without loosing the current data or interrupting the monitoring process.

User interface
Standard M2C user interface (Fig.1) is offered.

Figure 1. Example operator workplace for VisCMSE environment monitoring application.
 

Standard GUI
Standard GUI supports:
· Visual reflection of the position of sensors and other objects on the map of the area
· Visual indication (color) of their status
· Layered visualization (operator can bring up all sensors, but also can “hide” excessive information
· Satellite image analysis and creation of thematic maps
· Streaming video from monitored objects
· Graphical data representation (not shown)
· Raw data display
· Status display and history
· Display of local imagery
· Maps display
· GIS interface
· Command editor and command console (not shown)
· Configurable workplace display (operator can hide or bring up all the panels excerpt
for the area map). User can left
or right-click
on any object at the map, and bring up
object’s current status, location map, image, and the latest “raw” data set.
· Wide range of customization opportunities.
The system functionality is based on the standard set of system functions that are
supplied with M2C applications. For more details please review the M2C technology
description.