This Americas Program award will support a program development international workshop entitled Pan-American Sensors for Environmental Observatories (PASEO) Workshop, on the subjects of sensors and sensor networking in environmental observatories, and local applications of network systems. Organized by Dr. Thomas Harmon, of the University of California-Merced campus for the U.S. side, and Dr. Daniel Lupi of the Argentine Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Industrial (INTI) for the Argentinean side, PASEO will be held at the Instituto Argentino de Oceanografia (IADO) in Bahia Blanca, Argentina, and will bring together researchers and agency officials from Latin America and the United States to exchange research questions and discuss how best to build collaborative research efforts in this area.
The overall objective of the PASEO Workshop is to create a pathway for international collaborative research on the topic of environmental sensor networks. Engineers and scientists will gather to discuss common ground and identify critical needs surrounding networked sensing in terrestrial and aquatic systems, and at the interfaces between them. Specific outcomes from the workshop include: 1) a working list of potential sites for collaborative activities based on mutual interest by technology developers, application domain researchers, and logistical considerations; 2) development of a work plan for targeting the necessary resources to catalyze potential collaborative activities, and 3) identification of the major issues arising before or during the workshop, which require additional collaborative thought prior to implementation, and creation of an action plan for addressing those issues. This award is being jointly funded by the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET), the Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI), the Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE).
