2007_6_Nr6_EEMJ

Environmental Engineering and Management Journal November/December 2007, Vol.6, No.6, 517-520
http://omicron.ch.tuiasi.ro/EEMJ/
“Gh. Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, Romania
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VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTAL MEASUREMENT CENTER BASED ON
REMOTE INSTRUMENTATION
Marius Branzila 1∗ , Carmen Alexandru 2 , Codrin Donciu 1 ,
Alexandru Trandabăţ 1 , Cristina Schreiner 1
1 Technical University of Iasi, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, 51-53 Mangeron Blvd., 700050, Iasi, Romania
2 Technical University of Iasi, Faculty of Chemical Engineering, 71 Mangeron Blvd., 700050, Iasi, Romania
Abstract
In this paper we propose system architecture for virtual environmental measurement center based on remote instrumentation. We
use Internet facilities for transmission of the information. The station center can be used in remote control mode. Circumstance
data can be collected with logging field station (Web-E-Nose or meteorological station). The environmental measurement center
collects and automatically save data about the temperature in the air, relative humidity, pressure, wind speed and wind direction,
rain gauge, solar radiation and air quality but also can perform smell detection using a purposed Web-E-Nose. Also can analyze
historical data and evaluate statistical information and publish data in the Internet using LabVIEW Web Server capability.
Key words: environmental monitoring, remote and virtual instrumentation, LabVIEW Web Server, Web-E-Nose
1. Introduction
The EU-funded conference on "Environment,
Health, Safety: a challenge for measurements", held
in Paris in June 2001, recognized the need to improve
the performance of environmental measurement
systems and their harmonization at EU level, to foster
the dialogue between the providers of measurement
methods and the users of measurement results, and to
prepare the base - by establishing special
communication tools – for the integration of research
expertise and resources of environmental monitoring
across Europe. The concept presented herein aims to
respond to this actual challenge by combining the
latest software trends with the newest hardware
concepts in environmental monitoring, towards
providing reliable measurement results and
representative environmental indicators, evaluating
trends and quantifying the achieved results in order to
manage the potential environmental risk in
compliance with European legislation and local
particularities.
On the other hand, the climate change and the
unpredictable environmental phenomena occurring in
the last years impose new and modern meteorological
stations, updated to new evaluation conditions, and
offering remote access to measurement infrastructure
(Branzila et al., 2006).
The system presented below gives such an
opportunity of performing measurements under real
conditions from a remote location, of an optimum
access to sophisticated and/or expensive apparatus
and instrumentation - even geographically distributed,
and/or of repeating the same experience for a certain
number of times, at either convenient or unpredictable
hours, with minimum support from the technical staff
(Trandabat et al., 2005).
For this purpose, a new concept of performing
high-speed data acquisition based on remote sensors,
and an accurate transmission and processing of the
meteorological parameters towards obtaining useful
data for the users was developed in connection with
the centre services. New methods of interconnecting
hardware and dedicated software support were
successfully implemented in order to increase the
quality and precision of measurements.
In the same time, the Web concept itself is
changing the way the measurements are made
∗ Author to whom all correspondence should be addressed: branzila@ee.tuiasi.ro