PANORAMA
Luciana Puntillo Diamante
Advisor: Dr. Behrooz Shirazi – RA: Nina Peterson
Department of EECS, Washington State University, Pullman
BACKGROUND
In recent years, volcanic eruptions have been responsible
for millions of dollars in damages but more importantly they
have caused an astounding number of deaths (more than
29,000)[2].
An example of that is Mt. Saint Helens, WA; and its
eruption on May1980. (picture USGS website)
Today, Mt. Saint Helen’s alert level is green. However, it is
was not for several months, beginning during the fall of
2004 and ending on January 2008[1]. Throughout this
period, the volcano presented some earthquake activity and
volcanic gas emissions [1].
Because of the damage they cause, it is very important
to monitor volcanoes to learn the pattern of activities taking
place before an eruption.
As an improvement to the existing alternatives, Dr.
Shirazi and his team air-dropped a wireless network of low
cost sensors onto Mt. Saint Helens during the summer of
2008 and again during the summer of 2009.
The
sensors were placed in hours, instead of days, into
hazardous areas or places difficult to reach. The network
collects high-fidelity data in real-time which is then
configurable on-line [2].
Pictures from USGS webpage showing the high of the mudflow after the May 1980
eruption
WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK
The hardware placed at Mt. Saint
Helens contains a GPS receiver
and different kinds of sensors,
such as seismic, infrasonic and
lighting [2]. They send data back
to the control center where it is
processed with data collected
from space equipment. This
information is used to determine
power usage and bandwidth
availability [3].
The sensor network is capable of detecting
environmental conditions and adjusting which data has the
higher priority, the rate in which this data should be
collected, and the sensors that are closer to the event
detected get higher priority as well.
The network can autonomously modify the data route to
optimize resources such as power or bandwidth [3].
The sensor network is also
online configurable. This means the
scientists (seismologists, geologists,
volcanologists) working with the
sensors are able to change these
parameters according to the
situation they are more interested
in observe and gather data [2].
GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE
Panorama is the web page that displays the position of
the sensors using Google Earth. It also shows information
concerning the network, such as number of packets sent
and data rates.
When a node is clicked on, specific information such as
messages received, packet loss and delay, and node priority
of this particular node is displayed in a bubble coming out of
it.
RESULTS
 Made modifications to Panorama so it can be properly seen
using different browsers such as Chrome.
 Added new information and made modifications to the
existing layout.
 Integrated Command and Control information into
Panorama’s display.
REFERENCES
1. United States Geological Survey web page
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/about/volcanoes/cascades/mountsthelens.p
hp
2. W. Song, R. Huang, M. Xu, A. Ma, B. Shirazi, R. LaHusen. Air-dropped
Sensor Network for Real-time High-fidelity Volcano Monitoring
3. W. Song, B. Shirazi, R. Lahausen, S. Chien, S. Kedar, F. Webb, A.
Davis, D. Tran, J. Doubleday. Optimized Autonomous Space In-situ
Sensor Web for Volcano Monitoring. ESTC 2008.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Special thanks to Dr. Cook and Dr. Shirazi for the
opportunity to be part of this project.
Thank you also to Nina Peterson for her guidance and
support and to Rashmi Parthasarathy for her help.
FUTURE WORK
To create other web pages that complement Panorama
containing information related to the different commands
executed over the network.
To add raw or processed data to the various web pages
according to the needs of the geologists, seismologists and
other scientists interacting with Panorama.
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation’s REU program under grant number IIS-0647705