Welcome to the COMMON-Sense Net project, where academic expertise confronts itself with reality. As scientists specialized in computer-networks, hydrology, agriculture and human sciences, we decided to address a concrete issue for today's societies: water supply for agriculture in developing countries.

Fresh water is a vital but scarce resource for mankind. However, it is often used very inefficiently. According to most estimations, 40% of the water used for irrigation around the globe could be saved without impact on yield, provided agriculture adapted its practices. Since this sector accounts for two-thirds of the fresh water consumption worldwide, the gains can be significant.

To save water in irrigation, one needs to know the hydric needs of the plant at a given time, which means knowing its environment with precision. As a consequence, monitoring the rural environment for a better use of water resources has become a crucial challenge, especially in semi-arid developing countries, which suffer most of water shortage.

With their low cost, low maintenance and ease of deployment, wireless sensor networks emerge as a promising technology that is ideally adapted to such a problem. With the help of sensors communicating with each other wirelessly, it is possible to build an integrated picture of the field's environment, on which one can apply crop prediction models that feed a decision-support system for farmers.

Helped by funds from the Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development SDC, the NCCR MICS is teaming up with the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, the EPFL hydrology department HYDRAM and HEC Lausanne to make this exciting concept a reality.

News

August 2008: The executables are now on-line. Download the zips containing the COMMONSense Net application, and the Sensor-Tune application

August 2008: Jacques Panchard's PhD thesis is now on-line

July-August 2007: Two deployments are undertaken in parallel in India and Siwtzerland, with a total of 100 nodes to be installed in the field.

May 2007: Common-Sense application web-site is available on-line, with data from clusters located in India and Switzerland

November 2006 : CommonSense Net is presented at the Cooperation and Development Annual Conference 2006 at EPFL

May 2006: Article on CommonSense Net in the MICS newsletter

April 2006: Pictures of the first deployment in a rural setting in Karnataka

February 2006: test-bed in Switzerland (Changins) is up and running

February 2006: Testbed in Chennakeshavapura is up and running

February 2006: Article on CommonSense Net accepted for publication at ICTD 2006

May 2005: Article on CommonSense accepted at the IFIP WG 9.4 in Abuja, Nigeria

February 2005: COMMON-Sense Net first prototype is on-line

August 2004: User survey on user requirements completed in the Pavagada taluk (district)

March 19th 2004: Meet the different project partners during the project's kick-off meeting in Bangalore, and discover the intended deployment areas by having a look at the Common Sense picture album.

February 4th 2004: COMMON-Sense project was approved by SDC for funding.

February 23rd 2004: Official project kick-off in Bangalore

Acknowledgement

The COMMON-Sense web application was developed from sensorscope, an original design of LCAV at EPFL

CAOS