ICT and Environmental Monitoring Mr Conti ICT in Society

Why Monitor Environments? All kinds of environments can be monitored for different reasons:  people who work indoors will be more productive if the room is at a comfortable temperature and the air is neither too dry nor too humid  they will be safer if the building has fire and intruder alarms  rivers and soil can be monitored to check for pollution  public buildings need to monitor how many people are inside them in case of emergencies  greenhouses and industrial processes often need controlled levels of temperature, moisture or acidity.

Starter Task  On the next slide you are going to see a Network server room.  What needs to be monitored in this server room?  Write down 6 things you can see which require monitoring.

Network Server Room

Sounding the Alarm Sensors are located in or around the server room.  Each sensor monitors a different condition, e.g. temperature, humidity, smoke, floodwater, mains power etc.  When the condition crosses a set threshold, the output state changes to abnormal.  That triggers an alert, which could be an alarm sounding or a message sent to a mobile phone to tell someone there is a problem.  Some sensors, like smoke alarms, have a fixed threshold. Others, like temperature, can be set by the user.

Network Server Room

Shopping Centres Modern shopping centres monitor their environment very carefully. They need to know:  how many cars are in the car parks  how many people are in each part of the centre  whether the temperature and humidity levels are comfortable for shoppers.  They also need to be able to respond quickly in emergencies such as fires, because there are a lot of people in an enclosed space.

The Bullring Centre The Bullring Centre in Birmingham opened in 2003 at a cost of over £500 million. It controls:  3,100 car parking spaces  140 shops and  110,000 square metres of retail space.  On its opening day it had 276,600 visitors.

People Tracking Tracking people as they move around shopping centres is important for many reasons:  measuring how successful the centre is  mapping the routes people take; this helps to plan which shops and attractions go where  finding out how long visitors stay  making sure the visitor numbers aren’t too high for safety.  The path of shoppers inside a store can be tracked by fitting sensors to each trolley or basket.

People Tracking  The traditional way of counting people was to use a light beam sensor and count how many times it was broken.  Infra-red sensors mounted above each entrance can count how many people go through and which way they turn. Did you know that……… Most people getting off an escalator turn left?

Greenhouses Commercial food growers need to be able to control the climate that their crops grow in. They can control:  temperature: using heat sensors that turn heaters on and off or open air vents  the moisture of the soil: watering systems can be turned on and off by moisture sensors  the amount of light the plants receive: lighting can be turned on or off, or blinds lowered or raised either by timers or light sensors  the humidity: if the air is too dry, water can be sprayed into it.

Sensors and thresholds Thresholds are limits which trigger certain actions. Imagine a particular plant grows best between 20 and 25°C. The heater would be controlled like this: Switch on heater Temperature below 20 o C ? Temperature above 25 o C ? Yes No Is heater on ? Switch off heater No Yes No Yes Start To ventilation system

Plenary  All kinds of environments can be controlled for different reasons.  Sensors can be used to monitor different conditions including light, temperature, humidity, smoke, floodwater and mains power.  Certain sensors have a fixed threshold, others can be set by the user.  Crossing the threshold triggers an alert.  The alert can be auditory (for example, sounding an alarm) or visual (for example, a message on a screen), or it can make an event occur (for example, opening a vent or turning sprinklers on).