News

European Consortium Develops System Aiming at Improving the Living Conditions of the Population

Coimbra, Portugal, 25th March 2009 - Critical Software heads the consortium in charge of the EMMON project (EMbedded MONitoring), launched by the ARTEMIS Joint Undertaking (7th Framework Program of the European Commission).

The EMMON's main objective is the development of a functional prototype for the real-time monitoring of specific natural scenarios (related to the quality of urban life, forest environment, civil protection, etc…) using Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) devices.

The project goal is to develop a technology that allows an effective control and monitoring of an area of 50 square km in a real world scenario: a very large and dense deployment of thousands of wireless sensor nodes will be carried out and this will be a massive advancement compared to the current state-of-the-art.

The EMMON project (EMbedded MONitoring) will evolve through a partnership between Critical and eight other entities, including companies and universities. This consortium (Critical, Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, Intesys Ltd, Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones Tecnicas de Gipuzkoa, Critical Software Technologies, Trinity College of Dublin, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, SESM S.c.a.r.l., Akting Ingeniaritza S.L., ) will perform technological research in order to come up with a more efficient and low power consumption communication protocols.

Also, it involves the development of embedded software with better overall energy efficiency, security, reliability and fault-tolerance.

The outcome of this R&D project can, in the future, be used in any city in the world, and it can become an important aid to improve the living conditions of populations.

"The knowledge about our environment is essential to increase the awareness about the events around us, whether our focus is on pollution, noise, a river basin or a tropical rain forest.

The theoretical knowledge and simulation models about such surroundings are useful to understand past events and attempt to forecast the future.

Monitoring frequently is vital to have a clear picture of the environmental evolution, particularly assessing the impacts of climate change worldwide.

The EMMON project will target the challenge of large scale monitoring, researching to advance the state of the art in Wireless Sensor Networks, until making the technology to monitor at such large scale is feasible large scale monitoring technology feasible", states Délio Almeida, EMMON Project Manager.

In order to obtain large scale information and maximizing the results, EMMON has strong end-user involvement, in terms of requirements definition, problems and needs.

These inputs will be taken into account during technical reviews and field tests. End-users will come from several areas, including, civil protection (pollution and fire hazards), energy production, monitoring of water consumption, monitoring of natural environments, among others.