REAL TIME MONITORING

Environmental monitoring described the process and activities that need to take place to characterize and monitor the quality of the environment. Currently, the environmental monitoring especially for river and air are conducted by manual sampling at regular interval from designated stations for in-situ and laboratory analysis to determine parameters level. This type of monitoring known as manual method.

However, recent advance in information and sensor technology both have enable the development of real time monitoring capabilities for environmental management, which is classified as an automatic monitoring.

In general, real time monitoring is a monitoring system that equipped with robust equipment and sensor(s) for the purpose to measure real time of level for a set of selected parameters and enable remote monitoring via web-based application. This monitoring system allow the user to monitor the condition or performance from anywhere as the information will be synchronized to the website. Besides, it also capable to trigger alarm by sending notification alert upon reaching specific low/high level based on pre-set limit for selected parameters.

The application of real time monitoring is river monitoring station (RMS) and air monitoring station (AMS). Both systems are using electrochemical sensor and real time analyzer/data logger to capture the parameters reading.

Figure 1: River Monitoring Station

Figure 2: Air Monitoring Station

For RMS, it can be applied to monitor industrial effluent that discharge to river, sewage discharge, run-off from agricultural field, urban run-off and also installation prior to water intake at drinking water treatment plant. For river monitoring, parameters that critically monitor are pH, Dissolved Oxygen, Ammoniacal Nitrogen, Total Suspended Solid, Chemical Oxygen Demand, Biological Oxygen Demand, Ammonium, Temperature, Turbidity, Fluoride, Conductivity and Hydrocarbon (oil).

Figure 3: Example of Sonde; Model Aquared AP 7000 bu Aquared & Enviroequip Asia

For AMS, it can be applied to the urban environment air quality, monitoring grid point, city residential, business office area, construction area, traffic road area and all kind of mobile vehicle monitoring. The system monitors meteorological parameter such as humidity, rainfall, barometric pressure, temperature and wind direction, and plus additional parameters such as PM10, PM2.5,SOx, CO, VOC etc.

Figure 4: Example of AMS by Enviroequipment Asia

The systems periodically monitor parameters at pre-programmed interval and continuously upload to a dedicated data server. All data will be process and verified before they are displayed as a quick, simple and graphical access. The information flow is simplified as diagram below

Figure 5: General Information Flow

Real time remote monitoring technology offer advantages over historical monitoring techniques by streamlining the data collection process, potentially minimizing human errors and time delays, reducing overall cost of data collection, and significantly increasing the quantity and quality of data on temporal spatial scale (Anjaneyulu, 2007).

In order to achieve the listed benefits, it is crucial for system designer to understand the design requirement. List of the requirement that need to obtain, but not limited such as design goal(s) of real-time system installation, topography suited to the terrains, slope and gradients of the
proposed locations, type of soil, adequate space area, requirement from authority, design above flood level and, power supply source and equipment security