Ecologists and IBM join hands to monitor river (16-Aug-07)
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Full article: Ecologists and IBM join hands to monitor river (16-Aug-07)
The Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries and IBM have announced a collaboration combining innovative technology with marine biology expertise to create a world-class centre for river research. The two sides have very different goals; whilst the Beacon Institute seek to understand the river in order to protect it, IBM sees an opportunity to create a new business based on environmental awareness. Both partners hope that the methods they develop could in the future be used anywhere in the world where people rely on rivers.
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By Anthony DePalma
Thursday, August 16, 2007 BEACON, New York: Environmentalists and big corporations often end up in open conflict because they do not see eye to eye on whether a natural resource like a river should be protected or exploited.
But the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, a scientific research organization, and IBM, the computer giant, plan to come together in this old waterfront town on Thursday to announce a bold collaboration combining innovative technology with marine biology expertise to create a world-class center for river research. Their joint project will create a system of sensors to provide 24-hour-a-day monitoring of conditions in the 315-mile, or 500-kilometer, Hudson River as it flows from the Adirondack Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean.
The partnership will bring together two very different cultures, as was evident this week when IBM executives accompanied the Beacon Institute's director on a tour of the river aboard a 29-foot wooden fishing boat called Trust. The environmentalist wore a polo shirt and athletic shoes. One of the executives was in a dark blue suit and striped tie.
The two sides also have different goals. While the Beacon Institute, which receives financing primarily from the State of New York, seeks to understand the river in order to protect it, IBM sees an opportunity to create a new business based on environmental awareness. Both sides say they can accomplish something together that neither could do on its own. The overall cost has not yet been determined.
"We each hope to discover a lot of things along the way," said Harry Kolar, an executive with IBM's Global Engineering Solutions division. "This is not a typical project."
The data collected by the sensors could be used to make critical decisions, like when to allow power plants to run their cooling systems so they do not harm migrating fish.
Beyond the immediate application of the new technology in this region, the partners hope that the methods they develop could be used anywhere in the world where people rely on rivers. The sensors could detect the presence of parasites or pollution in rivers in developing countries long before they reach populated areas, for example, giving officials time to warn the public and provide alternatives.
The Beacon Institute and IBM also plan to sponsor an international conference on rivers and estuaries next year.
"This is the future," said John Cronin, the institute's director, who has spent years battling corporations that polluted the Hudson.
"If you can predict, you can protect."
Under terms of the partnership, IBM will assign six engineers to work on the project and will make available some of the data-collecting systems it has developed at its laboratories throughout the Hudson Valley. The company will also work over the next few years with Beacon Institute marine biologists and scientists to develop tools to analyze the flood of data.
The Beacon Institute, which Governor George Pataki of New York created in 2000 as a kind of river-focused rival to the famous Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, will use the array of real-time monitoring devices the way a doctor uses the data from a heart monitor, assessing the condition of the river from moment to moment.
The comprehensive system, which could be in place within a few years, will provide far more detailed information than has been available before, people involved with the project say.
Construction is nearing completion on a new educational center inside the remains of an old brick factory on Denning's Point, a spit of land here in Beacon that juts out into the Hudson. Plans call for two more buildings on the 8-acre, or 3.2-hectare, site, including a state-of-the-art research laboratory that is being designed with help from IBM engineers.
Sharon Nunes, an IBM vice president, is leading the Big Green Innovations group, which the company created this year to develop new businesses using IBM technology to address environmental problems.
Nunes called the application of advanced technology in solving environmental problems like those in the Hudson "the new moon race," saying it would entice young people to study physics and engineering, as the space program did in the 1960s.
Cronin said the environmental movement was entering a new era, in which the confrontations of the past - bringing big lawsuits against corporations to block environmentally harmful projects or to force polluters to clean up - no longer work.
"I don't see this as two different groups of people," said Cronin, who for 17 years was the Hudson's first "riverkeeper," a private pollution watchdog. "There isn't room for permanent enemies anymore."
Cronin said nonprofit environmental organizations alone could never afford to hire the experts or develop the technology required to meet contemporary environmental problems, like global climate change.
But corporations like IBM have that expertise on hand, he said.
Others involved in the environmental movement agree that the time for confrontation has passed. "There are real opportunities for partnerships like this to provide the expertise and capacity that nonprofit groups don't have," said Steve Rosenberg, senior vice president of Scenic Hudson, an environmental group.
Of course, such partnerships are not always possible, he said, citing the example of the long conflict between environmental watchdogs and General Electric that led to efforts to remove the class of chemicals known as PCBs from the Hudson.
But there is no such enmity evident in the agreement between the Beacon Institute and IBM. The partners plan to work closely with colleges and universities along the Hudson, providing research opportunities for students and faculty.
"If you look at large ecosystems - rain forests, the plains, the Arctic - they all require a scale of cooperation and deployment quite different from what historically an individual researcher could measure at one place in one time," said Arthur Sanderson, a professor of electrical, computer and systems engineering at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who is participating in the project. "This effort is very consistent with that emerging aspect of doing science on a large scale."
An important element of the program will be its accessibility not just to researchers and policymakers, but also to schools and universities. Much of the monitoring data will be available online as it comes in.
"You can imagine a student that might be in a Hudson Valley middle school or one of the universities essentially being able to observe the system themselves, to access the data and create their own hypotheses," Sanderson said.
- Source: International Herald Tribune
