Is it time for focused publications that aim to make sense of change at both the global and local scales?

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By Matt Ball | 15 May 2012 | 1602

Change is a constant that is inevitable, but what isn't inevitable are disruptive impacts. The more we know about our planet and how our built environment interacts with our natural environment, the more we will seamlessly adapt with little or no harm to lives and livelihoods. It's with the mission in mind -- to monitor, analyze and adapt to global change -- that the new re-branded Sensors & Systems is born. Coincident with this is the launch of a new Informed Infrastructure publication that is focused on extending infrastructure design to include impacts, with a focus on the geographies of the city scale and below.

The timing seems right for this transition, with a new focus that helps to simplify and more readily communicate a complex set of tools and approaches that will help us gain a better understanding in order to make more informed decisions. Having covered the geospatial industry for the past 15 years, it's exciting to see how far it has come in its utility and breadth of application. In the mission of tackling change, the new publications will embrace the unique role of geospatial tools to visualize and analyze spatio-temporal trends as well as expanding the scope of coverage to include aligned sensing technologies.

Global Change

We face many challenges at a global scale in terms of energy, water, food, and security that are being driven by population growth as well as climate change. Gaining a better understanding about the scale and scope of these changes, and how impacts are interrelated, is a big job that requires a rigorous methodology with interconnected systems and monitoring approaches.

While computer models have come a long way, we have yet to adequately model the complex systems of our planet. The web of remote sensing satellites and other sensor networks provide the tools to give us big-picture measurements of change to both our planet and atmosphere. However, our models must be calibrated with these inputs as well as fieldwork in order to understand local conditions. With a growing need to pull together our knowledge and to share insights in order to prioritize our actions, we’ll increasingly rely on sensors and systems to improve our knowledge of change.

Local Action
The greatest impact takes place at the regional and local level, where there’s also opportunity for action through policy. Mandates are a likely necessity to change how we manage our impacts, but with integrated monitoring systems, these mandates can be tuned toward performance rather than estimated outcomes.

There’s a change occurring with the connection of design tools to design analytics. This new informed design scales from local to regional to help manage our dense urban areas in concert with the natural world. Design in tune with nature is an ancient practice, but what’s new today is the ability to combine sensor inputs and modeling to tune infrastructure design to both the natural environment and existing structures. This whole new level of interactivity of models within the context of the real world promises to accurately measures impacts for improved performance and efficiency.

Separating the issues at the local and global scale makes sense in terms of practice and practitioner, however the linkages for both a broader perspective for those that work at the project level and for the local impacts for those that work at the policy level, are also important. To achieve these goals, these two sister publications, will share voices and features on occasion, as well as dialogue, in order to combine the outputs of our monitoring and management systems for cross-cutting exploration of sustainability topics at all scales. We hope you’ll continue to follow our content, and will expand your involvement by also subscribing to Informed Infrastructure.

About Matt Ball

Matt Ball

Matt has been promoting the application of sensors, systems, models and simulation for the better stewardship of our planet for the past fifteen years. The first ten years of that span were as editor of GeoWorld magazine and show manager of the GeoTec Event. The past five have been as a founder of Vector1 Media, with publications Sensors & Systems, Informed Infrastructure and Asia Surveying & Mapping. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.