Environmental Engineering Students go to Australia with new Field Sampling Technologies

Press Release. 01/10/02. Cambridge, MA.

The MIT ENVIT Student Group announces the completion of a new field data collection system for environmental sciences. Led by Enrique R. Vivoni and Richard Camilli, Ph.D. candidates at the Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory, and advised by Prof. Dara Entekhabi and Sheila Frankel, the ENVIT Student Group proposes to integrate information technology into the environmental curriculum at MIT. Sponsored by the MIT/Microsoft I-campus Project, the student group conducted an Undergraduate Seminar called Software Tools for Environmental Field Studies (STEFS), MIT Course 1.992. A total of 26 Civil and Environmental Engineering students directly participated in the development of the first prototype system, the ENVIT Field Data Collection System, through the Undergraduate Seminar, an M. Eng project and UROP research. The integrated data collection and field notebook application consists of software for hand-held computers, interfaces to environmental and geopositional sensors, a system of databases on multiple platforms, wireless connectivity and Internet data displays. The application software and hardware created by the ENVIT Student Group allows for the efficient, accurate and timely collection of environmental and geopositional data. Associating environmental parameters with a location is essential in many earth sciences. For disciplines with an active field work component (e.g. water resources, geology, biology), providing software tools that streamline the data collection process can significantly improve current practices. In addition, the technology will allow users to link real-time field data collection from various devices to a centralized data server located at a remote location. This capability can lead to improvements in the management of deployed field teams. More information on the various components of the ENVIT technology are available at http://web.mit.edu/envit/www.

An IAP Course and Field Trip organized by Sheila Frankel, Assistant Director of the Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory, to Australia and New Zealand will incorporate the new technology into a watershed water quality field and modeling study. For field testing the system, the ENVIT Student Group and the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering will be conducting a field trial in the Williams River near Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. A group of undergraduate and graduate students will spend approximately 14 days learning about the environmental resources in the two Island nations. In addition to the field trial, students will visit the Great Barrier Reef, the world's oldest rainforest, the Blue Mountains near Sydney, and the impressive cave system near Auckland. The collection of the real-time water quality and quantity data in the Williams River will be uploaded continuously to the Internet and displayed to the MIT community and the field researchers themselves through a custom-tailored web services application. More information on the Australian field test and the data collected in the Williams River watershed is available at http://envitweb.mit.edu/.

Contact Enrique R. Vivoni, MIT ENVIT President (vivoni@mit.edu) for additional information.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT ENVIT Student Group, 2001-2002