A Social environmental sensor network integrated within a web GIS platform

Abstract

We live in an era where typical measures towards the mitigation of environmental degradation follow the identification and recording of natural parameters closely associated with it. In addition, current scientific knowledge on the one hand may be applied to minimize the environmental impact of anthropogenic activities, whereas informatics on the other, playing a key role in this ecosystem, do offer new ways of implementing complex scientific processes regarding the collection, aggregation and analysis of data concerning environmental parameters. Furthermore, another related aspect to consider is the fact that almost all relevant data recordings are influenced by their given spatial characteristics. Taking all aforementioned inputs into account, managing such a great amount of complex and remote data requires specific digital structures; these structures are typically deployed over the Web on an attempt to capitalize existing open software platforms and modern developments of hardware technology. In this paper we present an effort to provide a technical solution based on sensing devices that are based on the well-known Arduino platform and operate continuously for gathering and transmitting of environmental state information. Controls, user interface and extensions of the proposed project rely on the Android mobile device platform (both from the software and hardware side). Finally, a crucial novel aspect of our work is the fact that all herein gathered data carry spatial information, which is rather fundamental for the successful correlation between pollutants and their place of origin. The latter is implemented by an interactive Web GIS platform operating oversight in situ and on a timeline basis.