Advanced Multi-Sensor Networks For

Environmental Risk Management

Prof. Gianfranco Avitabile Dept. Of
Electronics Politecnico di Bari - Italy
The impact of human activities over the environment experienced a dramatic growth in the last century often
giving rise to unpredictable effects. As a matter of fact, the impact of un-regulated industrial activities
over the last century has induced severe variations in the atmosphere resulting in
changes in weather manifestations which, in turn, increased the risk of hurricanes, excessive rain
precipitations and so on. Joint to these aspects, wild urbanization of wide areas surrounding the cities
exasperates the hazards deriving from landslides, floods, fire in the green areas, etc..
The management of environmental hazard could strongly benefit from the advances in
electronics, telecommunications and informatics, often related as Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT), which made available a wealth of sensors of different type which can be
suitably employed in early monitoring and risk assessment and management.
Advanced environmental risk management requires high performance integrated multi-sensor systems
enabling fast and accurate detection of disparate data and critical situations that must then be analyzed
through scientific modeling and intelligent supervisory interpretation, in order to devise and put at work correct
strategies for monitoring and contrasting wild land fires, landslides, floods and varied similar natural hazards. Multi-
sensor data fusion and integration still seems a relevant technological challenge when dealing with such complex
devices as Thermal/IR imaging systems, radar/lidars, sophisticated Visible cameras, plus the emerging distributed
wireless sensor networks (WSN) - with embedded sensing, computing and communication capabilit-
ies per each node - that may collect simple weather/hydro/chemical measures on the field under observation.
This short exposition makes an assessment of the technology advances in integrated multi-sensor networks,
starting by the illustration of the structure and some preliminary results of the ERMES Project (Enhance
Risk Management through Extended Sensors), sponsored by the Italian government under grant
#PON01-03113.
The global vision
The multisensory perception of the natural hazards, proposed by the ERMES project, takes the move by a
modern Sensor Service Architecture (referenced by such EU RTD Projects as S@ny, ORCHESTRA, SCIER
- see fig. 1 and 2), enabling an open but structured framework for information exchange and co-operation
among different processes and actors, like in a typical modern SOA ICT architecture, which also may
support web-based applications triggered by the same sensor data. This kind of approach may actually allow
a re-use of information derived by different Sensors networks, a reduction of costs in civil/natural Protection
activities, an increase of an holistic vision of the natural vulnerabilities in Italy and in the Euromed areas,
beyond the limits of too sectorial interventions, that miss the opportunity of a multisensory modeling of the
environmental risk management.
ISIT 2012 21 ISBN 978-612-45917-4-7 2012 IIITEC
N T AT ON MENU NEXT
Basically the ERMES project attempts to establish this sensor SA architecture and a related industrial vision
of the WSN, beyond the current scientific state of the art, through the development of advanced thermal/IR
sensor devices, new interferometric radars, self-correcting fish-eye cameras and concrete demonstrators of
simple on ground WSN (for simpler hydro/weather measures) in the case of typical combined environmental
risks/damages like those concerned with forest-fires and landslides.
The research starts from the proposal of single advanced Sensory Devices and WSN for typical
mediterranean natural hazards, goes through Multisensory software development and set up of the mentioned
sensors SA for data fusion, and aims to comply with the high level end of setting up advanced DSS (decision
support systems) tools and methodologies in order to better organize the complete cycle of prevention-alert-
contrast-mitigation activities at the Supervisory Command and Control Room. It is quite relevant within the
intended research work a tight interaction between the sensor data fusion layer and the higher intelligent
information fusion components of the proposed Environmental Management system (at the DSS level), the
latter typically needing a richer, semantic layer of knowledge acquisition software able to reason about
disparate, even not structured, information sources.
Fig.1 Sensors Service Oriented Architecture
ISIT 2012 22 ISBN 978-612-45917-4-7 2012 IIITEC
Another ancillary but still relevant goal of the ERMES project is also the emphasis put on the mobile
multisensor systems; some of the multisensory devices at the heart of ERMES (e.g. a fish-eye camera or an
IR sensor or a microwave interferometer ) could be carried on and relocated over a shelter-vehicle or under
the nose of a micro-UAV. An unmanned flying sensor is, in fact, considered as a valuable, cost-effective,
versatile solution in comparison with other costly remote sensing activities, in order to assess the evaluation
of some concrete risks on a small scale of diagnosis/inspection. Despite some current national constraints on
the use of mini-UAV (in terms of flight authorization), this mobile solution may/might represent a
significant contribution for a flexible and intelligent multi-sensor data integration, as it is particularly able to
allow faster re action to critical events.
The ERMES multi-sensor family of prototypes (both of some component sensory products and related
IT/DSS services) is envisaged for the next 4-5 years marketplace, at least in the field of Natural Risk
management; this realistic evaluation relies on the current market positioning of the Prime proposer, leading
nowdays the current service domestic markets, and is strictly tied to the necessary development and
engineering of the expected research results.
Fig.2 Sensor Web Enablement
ISIT 2012 23 ISBN 978-612-45917-4-7 2012 IIITEC
The sensors
The choice of the right sensor is strongly bound to the natural hazard to be monitored. As a matter of fact,
many forms of digital imaging may benefit from images taken by video cameras, possibly using light
enhancing techniques and aimed to the early detection of fire hazards or other risk, such as landslides. The
solution by itself suffers from poor inter-operability in harsh environment operations and should be
supported by other form of sensors.
Fig.3 IR sensing head integrating the scan system and multi-range optic
Fig.4 TFP SA multisensor IR head.
ISIT 2012 24 ISBN 978-612-45917-4-7 2012 IIITEC
Infrared sensors (IR) give a well assessed solution for fire monitoring. Several rugged commercial solutions
may be easily found on the market, even thou they must be customized by a wide extent to adapt the sensor
itself to the scenario.
An advanced electro-optical surveillance system must be mounted on a proper fixed basis on top of a pole,
at a suitable height and must be self-consistent in terms of scan movement (pan and tilt), ensuring both a
short and long range coverage (Fig.3).
In the ERMES project a rugged solution is under development in conjunction with TFP SA. This opto-
electronic system has been conceived as an ideal system for many applications in surveillance, such as
border control, security missions, wild-life observation, fire detection and even airport and terrestrial traffic
control (Fig.4).
As it can be clearly seen in Fig.4, the sensor head appears like a double opto-electronic system, composed
by two cameras-heads mounted on both sides of the pan-tilt case.
The rationale for this design solution is very simple and effective in the concrete operational scenario, where
a necessary integration with other sensor is required.
The main drawback of these solutions lies in the fact that they require a fixed or mobile shelter to manage the
relatively big dimensions and power requirements. In several operative scenarios this could be unpractical,
both for problem to access the area to be monitored and for intermittent operation needs. In these cases a
different strategy must be applied, based on small, agile unmanned aircraft (UAV) units with a reduced
payload, which can be an fish-eye base optical system, operating in the field of visible. The ground station
controlling the UAV may be remotely control the unit, supporting the necessary image manipulations.
Fig.5 Fixed position SAR monitoring
ISIT 2012 25 ISBN 978-612-45917-4-7 2012 IIITEC
The UAV based system open the door to a series of possible enhancement ad future development, extending
the range operation to other risk monitoring scenario. In particular, the system could strongly benefit from
the development of an interferometric radar for landslide control.
The operating principle of the radar is simple. A bi-static radar with an extremely stable frequency source
operate in phase coherent conditions, radiating the target scenario and comparing the current received echoes
along the scanned line-of-sight with the echoes acquired in the previous scans. The comparison furnishes
both displacement and speed informations related to the target. Scanning the scenario along a suitable
number of line-of-sights allows the evaluation of the scenario itself.
The scansion may be performed by flying vehicles or by a fixed terrestrial unit, mostly when, for example, a
known situation of land sliding is monitored (Fig.5).
An ideal operating SAR in our case should be compact, low weight enough to represent the UAV payload.
Currently the Politecnico di Bari unit is developing such solution, in the form of a bi-static radar operating in
Ka band.
As a further element of the system, a network of simple, disposable sensors is under development, which
must furnish the basis of a WSN (Wireless Sensors Network) specially meant for on-field detection and
measurement of environmental operative parameters, such as temperature and humidity, which furnish
further inputs to the data fusion process (Fig.6).
The units are highly re-configurable and support simple, robust protocol, even band on IPv6 paradigm.
Fig.6 WSN base on re-configurable units
Fig.7 The global ERMES vision
ISIT 2012 26
ISBN 978-612-45917-4-7 2012 IIITEC
The final vision of the ERMES project is depicted in Fig.7, where all the elements shortly described coexist
in a common remotely controlled system, which relyies on every sensor or on a limited subset, according
with the operative requirements. In this sense, the solution result highly scalable and adaptable to different
operating scenarios.
Data fusion and remote control
The wealth of data extracted by the sensors should be suitably manipulated and interpreted in a service
oriented architecture (SOA) which must perform a smart fusion based on suitable semantic ontologies
(Fig.8).
The model proposed by ERMES is based on a high level interaction with the operators in the control rooms,
allowing fast feedback response (prevention) on the monitored scenarios (Fig.9).
Conclusions
The availability of a wide range of sensors, which could be customized and adapted to several scenarios,
even in terms of cost, may be starting point for highly effective solutions for environmental risk monitoring
and prevention. It is evident that a successful system requires a joint effort involving all the fields of ICT
(electronic systems, telecommunications and informatics).
Fig.8 System Oriented architecture
Fig.9 Data + Intelligence fusion
ISIT 2012 27 ISBN 978-612-45917-4-7 2012 IIITEC