The computer science community is talking about 2010 as the birth year of "Societal - Information - Technology Systems" - known as SIS. The world economy and civilization have evolved into a complex grid of networks. From the transportation network to the telephone network to your local electric grid - large, complex networks and systems marked by the same similar characteristics. The big three traits are waste, inefficiency, and stupidity. For example, utilities lose more than 50% of water supplies around the world because of leaking infrastructure. In the United States alone, congested roads cost billions of dollars a year in lost work hours and wasted fuel. The inefficiencies hit hard at key sustainability issues - if the U.S. power grid were only 5% more efficient, this would eliminate greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of 53 million cars.
Waste and inefficiency are tightly linked to system stupidity. The fixed network is not intelligent: roads, power grids, and water distribution systems are essentially networks of dumb pipes. Making these networks smarter is viewed as a means to increase overall system efficiencies.
Technology is the driver behind this dynamic process. The Internet has been about connecting people - but what is needed is a greater emphasis and strategic vision on connecting things. Thanks to Moore's Law (a doubling of capacity every 18 months or so) - chips, sensors, and radio devices have become so small and cheap that they can be embedded virtually anywhere. Today, two-thirds of new products already come with some electronics built in. By 2017 there could be 7 trillion wirelessly connected devices and objects - about 1,000 per person. Sensors and chips will produce huge amounts of data. And IT systems are becoming powerful enough to analyze them in real time and predict how things will evolve. IBM has developed a technology it calls "stream computing." Machines using it can analyze data streams from hundreds of sources, such as surveillance cameras and Wall Street trading desks, summarize the results and make decisions.
Not strictly limited to infrastructure, SIS is also applicable to environmental projects. One example is the SmartBay project at Galway Bay in Ireland. The system draws information from sensors attached to buoys and weather gauges and from text messages from boaters about potentially dangerous floating objects. The system was developed by the Marine Institute (http://www.marine.ie/Home/) and Dublin based TechWorks Marine (http://www.techworks.ie/). The information the new buoys provide, which previously could only be collected by going to sea, will be beamed by radio to the Marine Institute's headquarters at Oranmore. There it will be analyzed and used to guide coastal zone management plans, advice for commercial fisherman, fish farmers, and water users of all kinds.
Look for SIS applications and a movement toward automated sensing, real-time measurement, data integration, modeled decision support, value pricing, and strategic risk management. Advanced water information management could include supply chain optimization, leak management, "smart levees", weather event assimilation, and pumping/energy management.
A video of the SmartBay application can be viewed at -
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