ACADEMIA

World-class wireless sensor network (WSN) technology, developed by CSIRO, is being deployed to help monitor Australia’s scarce water resources. The first phase of the network, using “Fleck” sensors, was deployed in Queensland’s Burdekin Irrigation Area earlier this month to monitor saltwater intrusion. The low-cost network can conduct wireless environmental monitoring in remote areas of Australia, thus reducing the cost of water resources monitoring and increasing water efficiency. This is one of the applications in a series of world-class technologies developed by CSIRO as part of developing a national Water Resources Observation Network (WRON). WRON aims to achieve 20 per cent saving in annual costs of water resource management by 2010. “WRON technologies will link together hydrometric, geospatial, usage and entitlement data using web services. Data will be analyzed to enable cheaper and more accurate reporting and forecasting of Australia’s scarce water resources,” says Ross Ackland who is leading the WRON program for CSIRO. “This will allow water managers to better anticipate changes in water availability and demand, define adequate allocations, shape demand and inform new infrastructure planning.” WRON technologies will provide accurate and timely water information providing a robust scientific foundation to a transparent, credible and evidence-based water reform process. In the Burdekin, five CSIRO-designed and built sensor Fleck measurement nodes and two relay nodes were installed to measure salinity, flow and groundwater level in key bores. The nodes self-organise to transmit data over the internet to scientists at CSIRO and the North Burdekin Water Board (NBWB) for analysis. NBWB have supported the deployment through a variety of measures including building relationships with the local community and providing flow meters and salinity sensors. This collaborative approach allows NBWB and CSIRO to improve their understanding of this complex and variable groundwater system that will have application across Australia. The near real time data will advise local sugar cane farmers of the point at which water becomes too saline to use for irrigation, thus saving water, time, money and crops. Wireless sensor networks act as ‘macroscopes’ allowing a study of environmental indicators at a fine scale over a considerable area, thus revolutionizing the way scientists gather data. CSIRO is working with State and Federal government agencies and public and private sector organisations to realize the WRON vision of establishing a technology platform to provide an Australia-wide network of water information systems delivering dynamic, timely reporting and forecasting of Australia’s water resources. WRON will bring the delivery of models in the water resource domain up to speed with the latest advances in technology for research and management. The approach is modular, where model components are selected in a web services framework. Calculations can be performed on a remote server farm or supercomputing facility, rather than on the desktop. This will have many advantages, including speed of model calculation, transparent auditing and archiving and flexibility of model delivery. The increased speed of calculation will enable many more scenarios to be tested and facilitate sensitivity and uncertainty analysis as a routine component of model delivery. The technology is part of the $9 million-a-year WRON being built by the Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, a national research program lead by CSIRO.