A research award from Microsoft Research helps scientists in Australia to monitor the health of coral reefs by using "smart" sensors along the Great Barrier Reef in combination with Microsoft SensorMap platform.

In time, the Great Barrier Reef project and SensorMap could help other scientists create innovative ways to observe the earth and monitor its well-being.

Coral Reefs in Distress

According to CORAL, (Coral Reef Alliance), coral reefs are among the planet’s most beautiful and productive ecosystems and rival rain forests for their richness of life. They support some 25 percent of all marine life, including 4,000 species of fish, 700 species of coral, and thousands of plant species.

Coral reefs, however, are threatened by pollution and sedimentation from activities such as oil drilling and coastal development, overfishing, and careless tourism operations that empty sewage near coral reefs.

The Great Barrier Reef Project

The goal of the Great Barrier Reef Project, undertaken by researchers at three Australian academic institutions, is to help scientists understand the health of coral reefs and detect early signs of distress.

The objective of the project: place a new generation of compact sensors along the Great Barrier Reef and use the Microsoft SensorMap to view the sensor data.

SensorMap is a platform—developed by Microsoft Research’s Networked Embedded Computing Group—to publish real-time data combined with geographic or other spatial information.

Grants for Innovative SensorMap Projects

Work at the Great Barrier Reef is made possible in part with funds from Microsoft Research. In 2007 the reef project—a joint venture of the University of Melbourne, James Cook University, and the Australian Institute of Marine Science—was one of 11 award recipients that submitted proposals in response to Microsoft Research’s "SensorMap: Browsing the Physical World in Real-Time RFP."

The Request for Proposal (RFP) allotted USD $700,000 in grants to projects that showed new ways to use the recently developed SensorMap platform and show its compatibility with a wide range of data sources.

Grant winners for the SensorMap project showed an interest in a wide range of sensing technologies and objectives but environmental themes were common. In addition to the Great Barrier Reef sensor team, researchers who received awards through this initiative are considering projects that include:

Creating a SensorMap interface in CitySense, a network of 100 sensors being placed around the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts that will make real-time weather and pollution observations.

Deploying sensors to schools in Singapore, where they will become part of a large-scale environmental and weather study.

Monitoring debris and mud flows in Taiwan, the lingering effects of a 1999 earthquake that caused groundwater to increase when typhoon rains flowed into crevices in rocks and soil.

Sensors mounted on automobiles that will provide real-time information about air quality in Nashville, Tennessee.

A New Way to Observe the World

"Together, these projects can help develop new ways to observe the world around us," says Feng Zhao, a scientist with Microsoft Research who is manager of the Networked Embedded Computing Group. The RFP is the result of the collaboration between this group and Stewart Tansley of Microsoft External Research.

These projects might also help solve one of the most vexing problems with sensors: though they are becoming increasingly common and powerful, sensors are rarely are able to share data with anyone other than the scientists who deploy them.

"If the sensor data they collect can be shared with other scientists and the public, the information can be even more useful," says Zhao. "We’re working on new ways to help scientists to publish the sensor data on the Internet."

Zhao envisions a time when a tools such as SensorMap, introduced in 2006 by Zhao’s research group, act as search engines for real-time data about the physical world. Someone might want to know about smog levels in Los Angeles. Someday, it might be possible to type in a few keywords to display that data as a map overlay.

A Goal to Increase Accessibility to Data

Recipients of the SensorMap RFP grants currently are building their systems and prototypes. The grants from Microsoft are gifts that come with very few requirements, but recipients are asked to make their research results, prototypes, and other outcomes widely available through papers, talks at meetings, Web sites, and other sources.

"We want to make sure the results get into the hands of anyone who needs them," says Zhao.