A cloud and ubiquitous architecture for effective environmental sensing and monitoring

Building a Smarter Planet with smarter energy are increasing concerns that touch all existing and known human areas, being them social, scientific, cultural, economical or political. Environmental sensing and monitoring initiatives will be gratified by new Information System (IS) architectures and collaboration protocols arising with Cloud Computing (CC) paradigm. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to: a) demonstrate that getting an efficient control and monitoring of Environmental Sensing, requires a Big Data processing and analysis capacity; b) enrich an existing proposal of a platform based on open source technology; and c) evidence the relevance of human aligned communication channels to assure the effectiveness of all system. Objectively, this paper proposes an innovative monitoring platform for Environmental Sensing, supported by a cloud and ubiquitous architecture, using Big Data processing capacity, towards an efficient, effective, sustainable and passive eco-environment, where human-tohuman relations allows the essential co-creation and co-decision in this business area. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.