Researchers from MIT and two Singaporean universities met last month for an inaugural workshop to launch a bold new international research program called CENSAM. The program will develop pervasive environmental sensor networks to collect data on parameters such as air and water quality from many sources, and use this data to provide accurate, real-time monitoring, modeling and control of the environment.

One of the first goals of the research group is to provide proof of the feasibility of the concept in a carefully managed urban area like Singapore. The greater hope is that these concepts might one day be widely applied on different scales to provide up-to-the-minute data about the environment in areas as small as a building or as large as the Earth’s biosphere.

CENSAM, the Center for Environmental Sensing and Modeling, is a research component of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Centre (or SMART Centre), a joint project of MIT and the National Research Foundation of Singapore.

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The workshop on “Wireless Sensor and Actuator Network Research on Opposite Sides of the Globe” gives a unique insight into research topics of two large research consortia, the ISSNIP consortium and the SENSEI consortium on the topic of Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks. The workshop is organised as part of the ICT Mobile Summit in Stockholm (www.ict-mobilesummit.eu/2008) on 9th June 2008.

The ARC Research Network on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing (ISSNIP) is the primary interface for sensor network research in Australia and consists of a network of more than 50 world leading local and international researchers from academia and industry, with a broader network of more than 100 affiliated researchers and students, as well as extensive links throughout Australia, the USA, Europe and Asia. The Research Network is part of an Australian Research Council initiative, created to facilitate increased inter-disciplinary collaboration across academia and industry in key research and development areas.

The SENSEI consortium (www.sensei-project.eu) is composed out of 9 companies, 2 SMEs, 2 research centres and 6 Universities, all based in Europe. The consortium was established to jointly work on wireless sensor and actuator network (WS&AN) technology and address the challenges of integrating WS&ANs into the Future Internet. The SENSEI consortium runs the SENSEI project as part of the 7th European Framework Programme on the topic of “The Network of the Future”.

For more information and the programme, go to: www.sensei-project.eu