Sensing in myspace
Article Type: Editorial From: Sensor Review, Volume 28, Issue 4
The theme of this issue is environmental sensing, and I am sure that by now everyone realizes that this could well be one of the most important areas for sensing technology.
In the bad old days our factories and homes threw out all sorts of pollutants into the atmosphere and into our water systems. In those days, smoking chimneys were signs of prosperity and pollution was hardly given a second thought. These days there are still areas of the developing world that are bad offenders but at least now we know it is harmful and have an international desire to control it– even if this control basically comes down to paying poor countries for your sins, much like “Indulgencies” for religious forgiveness.
Environmental change has always happened but we are now in an era where the rate of change is significant and noticeable within a person’s lifetime. This was brought home to me recently at a talk I attended where Robin Knox-Johnston (the first man to sail singlehanded non-stop around the world in 1968) was interviewed about his most recent circumnavigation.
A member of the audience asked him if he had noticed any environmental changes between when he first sailed round the world and now (a time span of only 40 years). His answer was very clear. Having served in the forces in India before his first voyage he remarked that in those days you could work outside all day and not be overly troubled by sunburn. Whereas these days about the longest you can stand without protection in the full equatorial sun is about half-an-hour.
About the time that I started editing this journal (1990) a company launched a sun-watch that you wore like a wrist watch and it kept an eye on your UV exposure as a sort of “dosimeter”. I never did see them in the shops but these days even very small branches of chemists have them on display.
The important benefit we have these days is that we are now able to measure so much more than we could before. Multi-spectral satellite imaging literally shows us what is going on and the effect that things are having on a global scale. This is very important because without the ability to measure we have no way of knowing just how bad things are and whether or not any actions that are being taken are having any noticeable effect.
Regarding the planet as a whole (as opposed to personal influences) it is interesting that nature can be our biggest friend, both by giving us ideas for biomimetic sensors (Lenau et al., 2008) and also cleaning up our act provided it is given the chance.
The best news is that environmental sensing is now big business, which in turn means that rapid developments will be made. I expect it will only be a few years before we all carry, in one form or another, perhaps in our phones,environmental sensors that record what pollutants and radiation we have been exposed to. If you add to this the ability, which we already have, to locate a mobile phone to within a few hundred metres, then the possibilities for detailed data collection are phenomenal.
Clive Loughlin
