Wood ’ s and Energy and Environment Affiliates Program “ Using Sensors and Big Data to Solve Environmental Challenges ”

In this project, we advanced a technology for monitoring aquifer hydraulic dynamics, using modern microfabricated sensors, simplified data acquisition, wireless networking, and improved algorithms for tomography. We have developed a wireless data acquisition system with fiber-optic technology pressure transducers and have already deployed this system in filed work. In parallel, we have been making progress in adapting miniature and low-cost microfabricated pressure sensors to conditions of exposure and pressure anticipated in groundwater applications. We have also been working on the development of signal processing and inverse modeling techniques that allow us to utilize large quantities of data, both produced from sources such as periodic variations of head in wells and random ambient signals with a broad spectrum of fluctuations, to characterize parameters of hydrogeologic system, like conductivity and storage coefficients, as well as changes in the state of the system, like pressure.