Environmental monitoring has traditionally been limited by sensors that are very constrained in their information-gathering capacities and that acquire data only at a relatively small number of distinct, widely-separated locations. This severly limits the ability to characterize an environment, to then model it, and to subsequently provide accurate information for policy decisions relating to its management. The Networked Infomechanical Systems (NIMS) program introduces a revolutionary new class of mobile distributed sensors that are networked both physically by infrastructure and electronically to enable monitoring and interaction with the full three-dimensional environments in which biological and other systems exist. NIMS sensors measure changes in the environment, autonomously move to locations of particular interest, collaborate to exploit diverse sensing modalities (imagery, acoustic, chemical and meteorological, etc.) in the detection and characterization of events, and learn from the collective experience of the network.
With members from the University of California, Los Angeles, Merced, and Riverside, and the University of Southern California, the NIMS team brings information technology experts in computer science, information theory, robotics, signal processing, and networked embedded computing together with biologists and public health specialists. The initial demonstration applications of NIMS will focus on 1) monitoring of global change indicators in a mountain riparian stream canyon and 2) detection of biological pathogens in coastal waters and urban rivers. However, the techniques being developed apply across an extremely wide range of environments and applications and have the potental to broadly impact science, policy, and national security. The NIMS program also enables an engaging, explorative Grade 6-8 science instruction program with both hands-on science and remote network access to NIMS.
