Abstract
Climate change and human activities have a strong impact on lakes and their catchments, so to understand ongoing processes it is fundamental to monitor environmental variables with a spatially well-distributed and high frequency network and efficiently share data. An effective sharing and interoperability of environmental information between technician and end-user fosters an in-depth knowledge of the territory and its critical environmental issues. In this paper, we present the approaches and the results obtained during the PITAGORA project (Interoperable Technological Platform for Acquisition, Management and Organization of Environmental data, related to the lake basin). PITAGORA was aimed at developing both instruments and data management, including pre-processing and quality control of raw data to ensure that data are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR principles). The main results show that the developed instrumentation is low-cost, easily implementable and reliable, and can be applied to the measurement of diverse environmental parameters such as meteorological, hydrological, physico-chemical, and geological. The flexibility of the solutions proposed make our system adaptable to different monitoring purposes, research, management, and civil protection. The real time access to environmental information can improve management of a territory and ecosystems, safety of the population, and sustainable socio-economic development.
Highlights
In the evaluation of the impacts of climate change and human activities on lakes and their catchments, accurately monitoring environmental parameters, both in spatial and temporal terms, is increasingly important for water resource management, quality assessment, and protection [1,2]
The purpose of this paper is to present the approaches, the results, and the instrument developed during the PITAGORA project and to present the subsequent advancement work on data acquisition, data transmission, web services, and elaboration of raw data
A more detailed description of the adopted system is given in the supplementary material (Figures S1–S4) where we present a description of motherboard, SDI-12—serial digital interface, UART—universal asynchronous receivertransmitter (RS485/UART RS232), 1 Wire, CAN-bus—controller area network, transmission, analog input voltage, GPS, GPRS, ZIGBEE, and power supply
Summary
In the evaluation of the impacts of climate change and human activities on lakes and their catchments, accurately monitoring environmental parameters, both in spatial and temporal terms, is increasingly important for water resource management, quality assessment, and protection [1,2]. Pluviometers and webcams are considered in real time and all the other sensors in near real time For this reason, to deepen environmental and meteorological knowledge and their evolution under the effects of climate change and human activities, during 2014–2015 a regional project was developed, funded under the POR FESR 2007/2013 of the Piedmont Region with the assistance of community FESR resources, the Italian State, and the Piedmont Region. One of the activities developed in the framework of this project by our Institute (CNR IRSA/ISE, Verbania), was the realization of an ICT system based on the Internet of Things This system was conceptualized for the protection and management of the aquatic ecosystems of Lakes Maggiore, Orta, and Mergozzo (Northwest of Italy, Piedmont Region) and their rivers basins, with the definition of an integrated system for the measurement, acquisition, transmission, and use of environmental data.
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