Environmental Resilience IOT Sensing and Decision Support
The Virridy satellite-connected gateway collects environmental sensor data and transmits to our online analytics platform.
Environmental Resilience
Climate change is exacerbating and accelerating environmental damage and economic stress globally. The World Health Organization projects over 250,000 additional deaths each year between 2030 and 2050 because of increases in heat waves, diarrhea, malaria, and crop failure. 100 million people could be pushed back into poverty by 2030 because of climate change. The current 20 year megadrought throughout the western United States is the worst in more than 500 years and is intensifying social and economic stressors. Today, two billion people live with chronic high water stress, and four billion experience water stress at least one month a year. One-third of agricultural soils globally are degraded, and two billion people face food insecurity. The United States remains the world’s largest emitter of carbon per capita, while global energy use continues to grow. Virridy enables action toward global environmental resilience.
How it Works
Virridy’s Resilience IOT technologies support proactive environmental resource management with and among communities globally. We focus on developing decision support information to enable early interventions and proactive management in the agricultural, water and energy sectors. Our technology leverages a range of in-situ and geospatial data sources to provide data analytics for integrated environmental resources management.
Virridy combines a variety of accessory sensors with satellite connectivity. We can monitor water use, conservation and quality; air quality; agricultural productivity; electricity consumption and other parameters to improve environmental conservation, energy efficiency and climate resilience. Accessory sensors include low and self-powered EnOcean transmitters, including custom designs and off-the-shelf products from other vendors.
Sensor data is transmitted to a cloud-based machine learning analysis platform for local and regional scale decision support.
Sensing Innovation - In-Situ Remotely Reporting Tryptophan-Like Fluorescence Sensors for Fecal Exposure Detection in Drinking Water
Virridy has developed a novel device for the measurement of tryptophan-like fluorescence (TLF), making use of recent advances in deep-ultraviolet light emitting diodes (UV-LEDs) and sensitive semiconductor photodiodes and photomultipliers. TLF is an emerging indicator of water quality that is associated with members of the coliform group of bacteria and therefore potential fecal contamination. Our technology is capable of detecting TLF levels corresponding to “high risk” fecal contamination levels (> 10 CFU/100 mL) in-situ, with remote reporting to alert water system operators.
Low-cost, field-deployable, near-time methods for assessing water quality have not before been available when and where waterborne infection risks are greatest.
Processor
- Low Power Texas Instruments MSP432P401R ARM Cortex M4
- 48MHz
- 256KB Flash
- 64KB RAM
Firmware
- TI-RTOS / Simplelink based firmware
- Field upgradeable
- Remotely configurable sampling and transmitting rates
- Supports new wireless sensors without reconfiguration
Wireless
- Uplink via Swarm satellite network
- 66 Low Earth Orbit 1/4U Satellites
- 137-138 MHz (downlink) 148-150 MHz (uplink)
- 150KB/mo. data plan
- Local wireless via Enocean
- 900MHz ISM band
- Supports up to 25 Ultra-low power energy harvesting devices
- 30m range
Wired
- SDI-12 multiple sensor input port
- Serial debug and programming port
Onboard
- 64Mb flash sensor data storage
- Temperature and humidity logging
- OLED diagnostic and setup interface
- Battery state of charge monitoring
Power
- 10.2Ah Protected Lithium Ion rechargeable energy storage
- Powers device in active mode for one month before recharging
- 6 Watt rugged solar panel for fast charging
Mechanical
- IP67 Waterproof rugged enclosure
- Stainless steel mounting bracket
- Compatible with industry standard Band-It mounting hardware
- Versatile bolt hole pattern for mounting in a wide variety of orientations
Waterwheel Database and API
WaterWheel is modern Python backend built using Django, the same framework that powers Instagram, Spotify, YouTube, Dropbox, and Pinterest.
- Django web app
- Postgres database
- Django REST API
- Containerized using Docker
- Deployed using AWS Elastic Beanstalk
- Can scale to 1M+ gateways
Waterwheel is currently storing and analyzing over 500,000 waterpump-days of data.
Driving Improvements in Global Heath
The IoT and connected sensors are driving improvements to human wellbeing in healthcare, water, agriculture, natural resource management, resiliency to climate change and energy.
wrote the United Nations and CISCO Systems wrote in a recently published report, Harnessing the Internet of Things for Global Development.
Our team at Virridy Inc. has conducted numerous studies since 2010 with our own IOT platform within public health interventions. Our results have influenced the design of these interventions, and provided data to enable performance based incentives.