Fog harvesting and iot based environment monitoring system at the ilalo volcano in ecuador

Abstract

Environmental monitoring is critical to developing appropriate policies for environmental sustainability. The quality of drinking and agricultural water is affected by bad environmental management strategies. In addition, natural water sources have been reduced due to climate changes and the lack of police and compliance with regulations for water resources management. In the Andes region of Ecuador, these problems have increased in recent decades. The lack of water affects not only human well-being, but also causes soil degradation. Therefore, finding alternative water sources has become the underlying requirement to provide human well-being and mitigate soil degradation in these regions. This article presents a fog collection system based on water condensation towers and Internet of Things (IoT) technology with real-time monitoring. Our system allows the monitoring of environmental parameters while providing alternative sources of water from the environmental fog. Therefore, by collecting information related to the process of fog collection and climatic measurements of the environment, we seek to determine the state and trends of environmental conditions with respect to the performance of fog collection. In addition, our system allows the storage of historical ecological data, which can be used to develop environmental management policies. We have deployed our system on the slopes of the Ilalo volcano, Pichincha province, being part of the Ecuadorian Andes, where the soil deterioration has increased in recent years and has the largest soil degradation rate in Ecuador.