Stephan Gruber (UniZ)
In 2006, the project PERMASENSE has started within the NCCR-MICS. Its prime objective is the utilization of WSNs under extreme environmental conditions in high-mountain areas. Because the successful application of WSNs bears great potential for research and early warming in mountain terrain, the Federal Office for the Environment is supporting the geo-science part of this project. Since 2006, two deployment sites have been installed, one on Jungfraujoch and one on the Matterhorn, at the 2003 rock fall detachment scar. While much success has been achieved in the development of these networks, the data recovery is still low. The designing, testing and operation of such WSN measurement systems as well as the communication between geo- and computer-scientists proved - while being very fruitful - to be much more challenging and time consuming than anticipated. As a consequence, the original project consortium of Uni Basel (Computer Science) and Uni Zurich (Geography) has now been expanded by ETH Zurich (Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory). In this presentation, PERMASENSE and the use of WSN for high-mountain research will be looked at from the perspective of a geoscientist – a potential user of WSN technology with high hopes for reliable measurement networks.