Publications

Invited Paper: Thoreau: A fully-buried wireless underground sensor network in an urban environment", Xufeng Zhang, Arseniy Andreyev, Colleen Zumpf, M. Cristina Negri, Supratik Guha, and Monisha Ghosh

This paper describes the design and deployment of a functional Wireless Underground Sensor Network (WUSN) on a university campus. This is an unique system that is operational over a large area and over a long period of time, providing real time monitoring of the environment with the data being curated and displayed on an open website. The system details, including the architecture, node design, user interface, and deployment are provided. Initial measurement results are analyzed to show the functionality and performance of the system. Index Terms—wireless sensor network, underground, internet of things, urban environment, soil sensing. Read more...

"Using Cyber Physical Systems To Map Water Quality Over Large Water Bodies”, P. Hirani, S. Balivada, R. Chauhan, G. Shaikh, L. Murthy, A. Balhara, R. C. Ponduru, H. Sharma, S. Chary, G.B. Subramanyam, S. Randhawa, T. Dutta, H. P. Gupta, A. Gupta, A. Haldar, A. Sarkar, I. Khan, S. Guha, IEEE Sensors Conference 2018, New Delhi, India, 2018

The world faces a grave water risk that affects all aspects of human life and ecology with implications for food security, energy production, industrial activity and human health. In this study, we use mobile (moving) sensors to spatially and temporally map river water quality based on in-situ data gathered in some of India’s major rivers. Data visualizations generated are intended to pinpoint sources of pollution, ensure regulatory compliance and examine health of the water body. We show that such cyber physical sensing techniques can be a powerful and more practical (or cost-effective) way to dynamically monitor, predict and regulate the quality of large bodies of water. Read more...

"BLUEWATER EYE: Using satellite as a low cost water pollution sensor: Analytics for deriving long term pollution insights based on mapping water turbidity”, S. Randhawa, R. Guruprasad, S. Balivada, P. Hirani, S. Guha, SPIE Remote Sensing Conference, Berlin, Germany, 2018.

We leverage geo-spatial data analytics in combination with cloud based, real-time in-situ sensing, that is capable of mapping changes in water turbidity of a water resource. Spatio-temporal pollution insights are derived and represented via color-based heatmaps and matrices that are overlaid on Google maps and facilitate visualization and identification of pollution hotspots. Read more...

"Thoreau: A subterranean wireless sensing network for agriculture and the environment", Xufeng Zhang, Arseniy Andreyev, Colleen Zumpf, M. Cristina Negri, Supratik Guha, and Monisha Ghosh, 1st IEEE Workshop on Wireless Communications and Networking in Extreme Environments (WCNEE 2017), Atlanta, GA, USA, 2017

This paper presents the deployment of a working Wireless Underground Sensor Network (WUSN) on a university campus using existing wireless networking technology at 902 MHz. This is the first full system of its kind that is operational over a long time, with the data being gathered available in real time on an open website. Design details of the WUSN are described, including the network architecture, sensor nodes, user interface and power management techniques. Initial results obtained from the sensor network are provided and analyzed, showing information regarding soil properties and their influence on the performance of the wireless transmission. Read more...

Report on water quality in Yamuna and its socio- economic impact, which demonstrates perceptions of the riverine community about the effect of pollution on their livelihood and health. The report, which is an outcome of months-long diligence by the Water-to-Cloud team of the Tata Centre for Development (TCD) at UChicago, also includes researchers’ insights on water quality based on rigorous scientific measurements. See report...

This report makes several recommendations based on the findings of the study. While there is a need to formally recognise the communities settled on the river banks as part of the riverine ecosystem, it is also important to synchronise their local ecological knowledge with scientific knowledge for implementing better water monitoring techniques. The other measures suggested in the report include the establishment of cooperatives in the riverine villages, recruitment of Ganga Praharis or guards to protect the river from exploitation by unscrupulous elements, and promotion of decentralised power structures to prevent malpractices related to fishing. See report...

Himank Sharma was invited to give a presentation on how Water-to-Cloud is addressing water quality challenges in Indian rivers at the 6th India Water Week, a forum by Government of India to discuss 'Water Cooperation – Coping with 21st Century Challenges'. Read more...

Priyank Hirani co-led a session on Plastic, Pollution and Pure Water with Heather Koldeway (National Geographic Society Fellow). Unsafe water kills more people every year than war and other forms of violence combined. They discussed what can be done to prevent this & allow for clean water access for all - India Economic Summit, New Delhi, October 2019. Read more...

Priyank Hirani discussed "Mapping and Monitoring of river Water Quality in India" at Water, Wastewater and Environmental Monitoring WWEM 2018 conference at Telford, UK, November 2018. Read more...

Ritambhara Chauhan presented on "Visualizing water bodies' quantitative data for effective pollution monitoring" at State of the Map (SoTM) Asia conference by Mapbox at Bangalore, India, November 2018. Read more...

Dr Sriniasa Balivada gave a talk on "A novel approach to pinpoint pollution sources in rivers" at Innovation and Frontier Technology for Water Security and Scarcity - 3rd Regional IWA Diffuse Pollution Conference at Chiang Mai, Thailand, November 2018. Read more...

Prof. Supratik Guha discussed the Water-to-Cloud approach for monitoring water quality at Flood Risk and River Basin Management seminar held at IIT Guwahati, India, November 2018.

Prof. Supratik Guha presented a novel technique to map and monitor water quality in India's rivers to a group of researchers at IIEST, Shibpur, India, April 2018.

Priyank Hirani presented a talk on "Water-to-Cloud: a novel monitoring approach" at the American Water Resources Association (AWRA) conference at Portland, USA, November 2017.

Saba Mundlay attended Mapping basics - an intense two-day program for students and working professionals aimed to equip the participants with essentials of GIS mapping using a variety of open source software.

Priyank Hirani attended the first ever UN Youth Climate Summit for his commitment to addressing the climate crisis and leadership in advancing solutions to contribute towards solutions for global climate emergency at the UN Headquarters, New York, September 2019.

Ritambhara Chauhan and Utkarsh Rai attended Tech4Good Summit by Google for a hands-on technical workshop and a panel discussion hosted for technology enthusiasts in the development sector working on projects using tools to create new knowledge, raise awareness and enable action, held at Google India office in Bangalore in August, 2019

Priyank Hirani represented the project as a panelist at Telangana Jagruthi International Youth Leadership Conference on "Good Health, Clean Water" held in Hyderabad, January 2019.

Tata Centre for Development (TCD) and International Innovation Corps (IIC) under the University of Chicago Trust held a Roundtable on "Water Quality Monitoring: Driving Decision Making through Actionable Data and Collaborations" at the University of Chicago Center in Delhi, New Delhi, India, January 2019. Read more...

Priyank Hirani was invited to the UPES - University of Cambridge workshop on "Sustainable Development: Technology and Beyond" where he presented on "Saving our Rivers - Working towards a shared Future" at Dehradun, India, January 2019.

Priyank Hirani was invited to the UPES - University of Cambridge workshop on "Sustainable Development: Technology and Beyond" where he presented on "Saving our Rivers - Working towards a shared Future" at Dehradun, India, January 2019.

Srinivasa Balivada attended the Indo-UK workshop on Monitoring and analysis strategies for anthropogenic pollutants in environmental and waste waters by Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore, India, November 2018.

Priyank Hirani and Ritambhara Chauhan were invited to attend the Namami Gange Workshop - NMCG brainstorms on G-governance of Namami Gange programme through Geospatial technology on World GIS Day on November 2018.