Establishing low cost aquatic monitoring networks for developing countries

Abstract

Effective monitoring of natural resources in developing countries is vital to ensuring the sustainability of the environment and major industries such as aquaculture. Sensor networks are a promising technology that can be employed to remotely gather real-time data on important environmental parameters. This data can be exploited by operators/policy makers to better manage environments and maximize the production from aquaculture ventures. However, developing countries face numerous problems in deploying and using sensor network technology. The main issues include cost, limited technological infrastructure, and inexperience with collecting, storing and analyzing data. This paper examines these issues and defines the level of quality that would be sufficient for providing developing countries with usable environmental data. We describe how a country’s existing infrastructure can be combined with scalable middleware (SAL) to integrate disparate technologies. We also present results from a test sensor network featuring heterogeneous technologies that is being used for environmental monitoring.