Abstract

Sensor networks are a logical extension of the greater ‘networked world’. They provide a means through which the digital world can sense and respond to changes in the real world. In recent years the concept of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has been the focus of intense research. Through large scale deployments of WSNs a world of ubiquitous sensing is envisaged, continuously monitoring our environment and instantly detecting and reporting changes in the quality of our environment. In its ultimate manifestation this happens at internet scale with sensor technologies serving as peripherals for the internet and bringing a range of data concerning our physical environment to the wider web where it is aggregated, correlations identified, information extracted, and feedback loops used to take appropriate action. However there lie many challenges in the realisation of this vision in the area of environmental monitoring as the current state of the art in WSNs poses many problems such as calibration errors, noisy data, sensors going offline etc. This research proposes that inland and coastal marine environmental monitoring networks would strongly benefit from the use of a multi-modal sensor network utilising visual sensors and other sensed information alongside the more traditional in-situ wireless sensor networks. This analysis presents our ongoing research and work which has investigated the use of visual sensors – including digital cameras and satellite imagers – and context information alongside a traditional in-situ wireless sensor network for improved event detection in coastal and inland marine environments.