Reference no: EM133684264

Sensors and Sensing for Scientists

Choose Monitoring potential weathering of culturally-significant rock art topic for it.

SENSING PROPOSAL:

In Part 1, you will design and develop a proposal that uses sensors and sensing to respond to and investigate one of the research questions from the choice of three given below.

You will take the role of Scientist-in-Charge of a multidisciplinary team. The proposal will be a technical brief (Powerpoint file) that will enable your team to start work on the project.

This is NOT a scientific research paper - you can use knowledge of the underlying science of the problem to inform your sensing methods - however, your concern is collecting the data.

You will need to: define and identify applicable sensors and technologies; address sensing methodology to be used; and highlight challenges to be addressed for data collection and deployment. You should consider your proposal to be directed to a non-scientific technical audience - those who will make all the technical aspects of the project happen. They are not interested so much in the underlying science of the project but in the technical aspects of making your project work (e.g., hardware and software specialists, engineers). You may elude to the science but it is not the primary focus of the proposal. It is a sensing and sensor proposal aimed at defining the equipment that will enable the measurements to be made.

In Part 2, a brief oral examination to a panel of teaching staff will be conducted by Zoom where you will overview your project and answer three questions relating to your sensing proposal.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS (Choose and respond to ONE research question)

JG: Development of a Sensor Package for Measuring Fine Scale Atmospheric Properties using a Drone.
The underlying task is to obtain measurements of the structure of the lower atmosphere on a relatively fine scale. Specifically, measurement is required at a range of heights (at ~10 m resolution up to 100 m altitude) of parameters such as wind speed and direction, pressure, temperature and humidity. A drone (uncrewed aerial vehicle, UAV) is to be the platform for the primary sensors.

Measurements could be taken over land or ocean in inaccessible (but nearby) locations - you should nominate the type of environment for which your sensor package is designed (e.g., atoll, rainforest) and include other relevant measurements for that environment. There are a number literature sources where similar systems have been proposed for various applications.

JW: Determining the Source of Sediments by Measuring Sediment Type

In this study you need to determine the origin of suspended sediments and deposited sediments at a coral reef site. The sediments could be local sediment resuspended by waves, runoff from a nearby river, or from a dredging project which is cutting through rock and creating fine particles. You want to determine under which weather and oceanographic conditions the sediments at the site are from which source. The sediment types from each source are different, varying in particle size distribution and slightly in colour. Your proposal should include methods to determine the sediment type at the site (both suspended and deposited) under all conditions and complementary methods to measure weather and oceanographic conditions for comparison.

SH: Monitoring potential weathering of culturally-significant rock art
Rock art is a feature present at cultural sites around the world. Preceding the earliest formal writing, rock art records ancient testimony of human communication and artistic creativity. Your task is to monitor potential weather of rock art through measuring (i) properties of the rock art itself (e.g., pigment quality = colour, spectral reflectivity); and (ii) weather conditions relevant to potential impacts upon the rock art. Depending upon the location of your chosen rock art, the latter measurements may relate to sea level rise (inundation or submersion), ocean acidification, humidity change (water vapour content), wind and rain (abrasion), and discolouration by fire. Consideration should be given to the frequency and temporal span of measurements required to determine perceptible changes, as well as detection of weather events to undertake additional interstitial responsive measurements.

ESSENTIAL PARTS OF THE SENSING PROPOSAL
You must address the following in your proposal (see also marking rubric below)

Proposal Overview
A succinct overview section (one slide) that outlines your proposed sensing study in relation to the research question.
This section may be the only part of your document that your multidisciplinary team will bother to read so it must be succinct and concise. It needs to focus on the sensors that will be used to make the measurements that will facilitate your scientific study. What model sensors will you use, how will they connect (architecture) and transmit data? e.g. "Burst temperature and humidity sampling will be made every hour using a Pt RTD temp sensor (sensor Inc 201) and a capacitive humidity sensor (MicoLABS 320), respectively. These will be connected to a wireless-enabled datalogger (LogNET007) that will upload daily to a central server via the 5G network."
The more succinct and concise you are the better. The quicker the feasibility of your project can be assessed, the better.

Requirement Mapping
You need to map the requirements of the study to the specifications/capability of your chosen sensor(s) and system. Requirements do not relate to just sensing - consider housings, casings, saving data, communicating data, power, energy harvesting, calibration, etc. This is your wish list.

This is best done in a table to outine study requirements vs sensor/system performance (see example table below). In short, this is where you demonstrate if your sensor is/sensors are good enough to give you the information required to answer your research question (e.g., What range of values do you expect in your study? What precision and accuracy does your study require?). These are quite different! What you want and what you get don't always align. It's OK if your sensor performs better than your requirements, but bear in mind that such a sensor may be more expensive compared with other alternatives that can do the job. If you cannot find any sensor to meet to your requirements, that's OK too but you should note that the sensor is a limitation of the study.

Sensor Architecture Block Diagram
A block diagram is required showing modular architecture and interconnectivity of sensors with relevant datalogger, etc. This should show all data communication paths including those to logger and cloud or server. Stand-alone sensors should also be shown on this diagram. Remember, such a diagram can be a very succinct way to communicate information without the use of long paragraphs.
Deployment challenges and sampling protocol
Your proposal should include a plan for deployment. How and where will the sensors be deployed to enable you to collect adequate data to answer your research question.
How often will sensors need to: read data, store data; send data (e.g., wirelessly). Will you use burst sampling? Will you report averages? Should you consider sensor drop outs/redundancies in your plan. Sampling frequencies and methodology can also be tabulated for each sensor/measurand.
Sensor failures
Sensor failures and environmental considerations (microclimates) should be considered along with contingencies to mitigate (e.g., maintenance).

LENGTH - Your proposal should be no more than 10 slides in length, excluding cover slide and references.

The Oral Justification
The oral justification has two parts. In part A, you will provide an overview of your project to us, as if you were presenting for the first time to a technical but non-scientific audience. You should aim to be concise and cover the salient features of your Powerpoint in about 5 minutes (so don't spend time on technical details or specifications unless they are critical to your justification). Remember it is your sensing proposal design and you will know it far better than we do!

In part B, you will answer questions to test your understanding relating to two Focus Areas relevant to the proposal. Your knowledge of each focus area will be assessed from one or more leading questions that relate to the focus area.

The time for the Oral justifications will be scheduled and posted on LearnJCU. It is anticipated that the process will take no more than 10 minutes.

There should be only 10 slides and each slide. it should have 4-5 points with max 5 words each. Please provide good script.