IoT in environmental monitoring crucial for understanding climate

As the world population grows and climate change drives up temperatures and affects soil health desperately needed for growing crops, IoT in environmental monitoring is an incredibly useful tool as it leverages a range of technologies to monitor parameters crucial to understanding the impact of a growing population on the environment. 

Using IoT technologies best

Using a combination of sensors, network technologies, data processing and software, what IoT looks like for environmental monitoring is varied. Sensing technologies are used to monitor parameters such as soil health, water quality and air quality; network technologies from cellular to satellite communications ensure coverage and the transmission of data; data processing uses Edge computing, Cloud computing and AI to process the data produced; while software solutions offer a place to store the data insights and analytics. You could argue that they’re all a key part in collecting information on the environment. 

Sometimes environmental monitoring is done for research purposes; but other reasons can include ensuring regulatory compliance; assessing if sustainability goals have been met; and resource management. 

A recent collaboration between CENSIS and Aqsen Innovations demonstrated how the use of IoT in environmental monitoring might be put into practice, as the partnership spawned a sensing system targeted at real-time detecting and monitoring of water quality. The system can monitoring parameters such as temperature, oxygenation, salinity and chemical presence, particularly in parts of the world vulnerable to flooding or reliant on industries sensitive to climate change such as agriculture and aquaculture.

Rinku Dasbiswas, Co-Founder of Aqsen Innovations framed the system as a solution able to “help to improve productivity across a variety of sectors grappling with environmental challenges.”

Last year, meanwhile, as part of a partnership with electric off-road racing series Extreme E, Vodafone used its IoT technology to monitor water quality and temperatures in Scotland in an effort to measure and mitigate the effects of rising temperatures on Atlantic salmon, who are particularly susceptible to climate change; 70% of wild salmon numbers have declined 70% in the last 25 years.

The use case saw water quality sensors and temperature sensing devices deployed in the river and riverbank to collect data and transmit it back to the Nith District Salmon Fishery Board. The company used NB-IoT as a network technology able to provide coverage over large distances with low power consumption. 

“IoT technology can be used in remote and hard-to-reach places and we see lots of opportunities to use IoT to better support the environmental and sustainability agenda,” said Gemma Barsby, UK Head of IoT, Vodafone, at the time of the announcement. 

And in more recent news, the UK Space Agency announced a £9 million investment for satellite instruments to monitor climate change, in what is its largest investment yet into an early-stage tech programme.

The investment will support 12 projects that will monitor the Earth’s atmosphere and hopefully provide a “clearer picture” of activities that are producing high levels of emissions and therefore enable key decision makers to respond accordingly. In espousing the benefits of satellite technology in the particular field of environmental monitoring, Beth Greenaway, Head of Earth Observation and Climate Change at the UK Space Agency said at the time of announcement: “Satellites play a vital role in monitoring emissions, weather patterns and other environmental factors, using a variety of sensors and instruments that return information to Earth. Indeed, some of the information can only be collected from space.”

Undoubtedly climate change is anticipated to bring extreme weather patterns including floods and droughts, as well as rising temperatures that will affect how we grow our food and wild populations of animals, including Atlantic salmon. Using IoT in environmental monitoring may include a use case such as developing a sensing system to monitor water quality, but is part of a wider picture to protect the environment.

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