Next Generation System For Real-Time Monitoring Of Rainfall, Soil Moisture, And Soil Temperature
      Here we present our work on an environmental sensing network that we have been developing over a number of years at The University of Iowa. Sponsored by the Iowa Flood Center, the system consists of instrumentation that measures rainfall, soil moisture, and soil temperature. Field instrumentation relays data via cellular modems to a central server. Users can access the data through a web browser, and programmatic interfaces allow for ingestion of the data into computational models for flood forecasting.
We described an end-to-end environmental sensing network that researchers have been developing at The University of Iowa. Some of the features of the network include distributed soil moisture, soil temperature, and dual tipping-bucket rainfall measurements at each field site. The distributed and redundant data collection greatly improves data quality. We employ a bus architecture that allows for different types of sensors and future expansion. An on-board GPS provides accurate time stamps and georeferencing of the data.
The hardware was designed for continuous, year-round operation. Data collection equipment and sensors are low power and solar powered. A cellular communication link allows for real-time monitoring. However, an internal SD card provides on-site data backup. The default data collection rate is 15 minutes, but one can adjust this from The University of Iowa, over the cellular link. Incoming data are managed in a relational database. There are flexible interfaces to the data, ranging from data summaries and views of the system health in a web browser, to programmatic access through scripts and compiled programs.


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