Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Body area network:
wearable computers/displays
Office
network
The
intelligent
home
Vehicle
network
Supermarket, etc.
FIGURE 16.1
Ubicomp and the emerging sentient environment in daily life. (Courtesy of Fraunhofer
Verbund Mikroelectronic, Berlin, Germany.)
Smart dust
tagged insects
Airborne remote sensors GPS satellites
Sap flow sensor array
Minirhizotron
array
Commercial
remote
sensing
satellites
E-nose
Sensor clustered
MEMS insects
Smart pods
Weather station
Automated
E-tongue
Multiparameter
soil probes
FIGURE 16.2
Ubicomp and sensor webs: an electronic skin of planet Earth. (From Tao, V., The smart sensor
web: A revolutionary leap in earth observation,
GeoWorld Magazine
, September Issue, figure first published
in
GeoWorld Magazine
, September 2003, http://www.geoplace.com, 2003.)
sensor web (sensor network designed for environmental monitoring) in the environment, ubicomp
has become an integral part of an electronic skin wrapping around the Earth (Figure 16.2). More and
more objects we interact with on a daily basis are now equipped with computing processing power,
while many others are activated by passing processors carried by people or mounted on vehicles in
increasingly sentient cities (Shepard, 2011). As Crang and Graham (2007) observed, 'our environment
is not a passive backdrop but an active agent in organizing our daily lives. The spaces around us are
now being continually created and re-created in informational and communication processes' (p. 789).
We are increasingly living in sentient cities 'where we not only think about cities but cities think of us'
(p. 790). Indeed, in the ubicomp age, computers should not simply be regarded as external to the prob-
lem/solution; instead, they must be viewed as an active agent in shaping who we are and what we do.
Ubicomp, also known as pervasive computing (Genco and Sorce, 2010), is typically invisible but
accessible everywhere within a particular locale. Ubicomp represents the third wave of computing
