News Release

Center will create wireless sensors to monitor environment, buildings

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of California - Los Angeles

Buildings that "detune" themselves during an earthquake to prevent collapse, and water systems that automatically detect sabotage and isolate the danger are among the possible future breakthroughs to be pioneered by a new UCLA research center intended to create a new generation of wireless sensing technologies.

Just as UCLA was the first node on the ARPANET, a computer network that was the precursor to the Internet, researchers say the next incarnation of the Internet — a total communications system permeating the physical world — will be developed at the newly established UCLA Center for Embedded Networked Sensing.

The center will receive up to $40 million over the next 10 years from the National Science Foundation, which has identified the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing as one of six new Science and Technology Centers to be established in 2002.

Embedded networked sensing systems will use tiny devices — called sensors and actuators — that can be densely distributed within a natural or man-made environment to monitor and collect information on such diverse subjects as plankton colonies, endangered species, contaminants in soil and air, airplane wings, artificial structures such as buildings, and even physiological information about medical patients.

"This technology will help us connect the physical world just as the Internet has allowed us to connect the world of computers," said Deborah Estrin, a UCLA computer science professor who will direct the center. "Not only will we be able to collect information not available before, but this will allow us to design systems to automatically take action once a pollutant, structural failure or other hazard is detected."

A diverse group of computer scientists, electrical engineers, biologists and geophysicists are involved with the center. Approximately 20 UCLA faculty, as well as faculty from USC, UC Riverside, the Jet Propulsion Lab and Caltech, make up the research team. Professors from almost every department at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science are taking part, as well as UCLA researchers in biology, earth sciences, education and information studies, and the NanoSystems Institute.

Initially the center will concentrate on developing the fundamental technology to create the sensor networks. To make sure that the networks will be able to operate without constant human supervision, researchers will focus on developing devices that can organize themselves into a network, repair themselves and manage their own power consumption.

Then, working together with scientists in other fields, computer scientists and engineers will apply the networks in four physical areas: the environment and its biological diversity, earthquake-prone structures, pollutant flows through water and land, and detection and identification of tiny organisms that contaminate the oceans and coastal waters.

Estrin said these application areas represent critical quality-of-life issues, particularly in dense urban areas.

The center's earthquake project includes broadening a network of earthquake monitors installed in a 17-story building on the UCLA campus. The Factor Building, home to the UCLA School of Nursing and medical research laboratories, already is the most heavily instrumented structure in North America as a result of a network installed several years ago by the U.S. Geological Survey.

By developing a new generation of sensors that can be embedded into the structure, researchers hope to be able to learn more about how steel-frame buildings — the dominant form of high-rise construction in Southern California — react during earthquakes.

The results may provide insight into how to improve building safety and could provide instantaneous information about earthquake damage, said Monica Kohler, a UCLA seismologist who is helping to lead the project. Eventually, engineers might use the information to create buildings that can change structural properties to prevent collapse or other damage, she said.

The advance information that the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing will produce could be used to "detune" buildings to avoid resonance with seismic radiation, which toppled high-rise buildings in the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, Kohler said.

Urbanization has a major effect on local ecologies and the technologies developed at the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing will allow rapid and low-cost mapping of species diversity, ecosystem structure and environmental change. In addition, the center hopes to revolutionize the monitoring of contaminant flow through soil, water and air. This technology will provide critical tools for industry and offer valuable means of assessing health impacts, researchers say.

The Center for Embedded Networked Sensing also will seek to develop technology to allow for rapid identification of viruses, bacteria, microalgae and protozoa that contaminate coastal and marine environments, and better allow scientists to study these microorganisms and the conditions in which they develop.

Scientists will monitor algae blooms that result in "brown tides," which can poison marine life and create noxious odors. Researchers hope to be able to understand what causes the blooms and understand their growth patterns.

In the past, scientists may have taken samples from various spots in the ocean about a mile apart to monitor the density and growth of the algae. By developing spatially dense networks of sensors, researchers hope to understand the microscopic behavior of the one-cell animals.

"This technology will enable us to look at marine biology in a much smaller scale than ever before," said Ari Requicha, a USC computer scientist who heads the effort to create the marine monitoring systems.

The Center for Embedded Networked Sensing also will play a role in inquiry-based science education. Grade school students using the center's technologies will design and conduct long-term scientific experiments by operating a remote habitat sensor network, which will collect and compare environmental factors with species observations.

Conducting science by having students design real experiments involving data from live, active networks is a powerful advance in science education, Estrin said. Initially, middle-school students will conduct original experiments using a hummingbird and bluebird habitat-monitoring project at the James Reserve in the San Jacinto Mountains.

"This model of embedded networked sensing will catalyze the greater research community to realize the vision of a truly embedded Internet," Estrin said. "The research environment at UCLA is very rich. The center provides another arena to support interdisciplinary research that will have a tremendous impact on our future."

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The Center for Embedded Networked Sensing is one of six programs selected for funding this year under the National Science Foundation's Integrative Partnerships Program. This program is designed to support innovative approaches to combining cutting-edge research, education and knowledge transfer.


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