Sensors everywhere - but can you make decisions?

摘要

Studying rainforests isn't easy, as data collection often involves climbing trees carrying cumbersome instruments. But that is changing in Costa Rica's Le Selva rainforest. With $646,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation, the Organization for Tropical Studies recently installed a cluster of towers and a canopy walkway over several acres of the rainforest to facilitate access. After 10,000 man-hours of tower assembly and cable trenching for power and fibre optics, sensor networks, including digital cameras, were installed in spring 2010. In addition to transmitting rainforest data to the stations servers, the infrastructure will turn La Selva into a virtual classroom where professors conduct live lectures from the canopy, which are sent over the internet to students.