acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

ACM TechNews

IBM Makes Lake George World's Smartest Lake


View as: Print Mobile App Share:
Lake George

Credit: newyorkfishing.us

Researchers at IBM, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Fund for Lake George have collaborated to use Internet of Things technology to turn New York State's Lake George into a "smart lake" by combining sensors and computer models to get a clearer picture of the lake and its ecosystem. The effort, called the Jefferson Project, is described as a "physics-to-fish" effort that will assess the health of the lake on multiple levels.

The relatively pristine Lake George faces several man-made threats, such as salt run-off from nearby roads, invasive species, and algae. Various Jefferson Project teams, consisting of more than 60 scientists from multiple disciplines, will create models of the lake and supplement them with data generated by sensors placed throughout the lake, from the surface to the lake bed and even in the streams that feed into it. "The key to protecting this precious natural resource lies in the data, and the stage is now set to discover a deluge of insights about the delicate ecology of the lake and the factors that threaten it," says IBM's Harry Kolar, associate director of the Jefferson Project.

The researchers already have learned new things about the lake, such as the existence of an underwater "ghost wave" and the way currents change when the lake freezes.

From Information Week
View Full Article

 

Abstracts Copyright © 2015 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA


 

No entries found

Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account