October 28, 2021
HPWREN Retrospective: 20 Years of HPWREN Collaborations with Firefighting and Other Public Safety Agencies
This article summarizes the somewhat unusual collaboration between a research project at the University of California San Diego and first responder agencies over the past approximately 20 years.
September 28, 2021
HPWREN Cameras Used to Demonstrate the Effects of Light Pollution
By Robert Quimby, Director, Mount Laguna Observatory
Professor of Astronomy, San Diego State University
I have created a short video comparing the views of the stars from the HPWREN cameras on Mt. San Miguel (overlooking the San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan area) and at the Mount Laguna Observatory (44 miles east of downtown San Diego). The videos are intended to show that while the same stars shine over both sites, the sky glow from city lights strongly obscure the stars above Mt. San Miguel.
High school student Colin Wessels in Idaho did a summer project with CAIDA and HPWREN on the impact of the pandemic on patterns of air traffic, based on ABS-B data collected via a receiver on Mt. Woodson that is connected to the HPWREN network. This article is his report on the project.
August 26, 2021
How Coronavirus Affected Air Traffic in Southern California
By Colin Wessels
Introduction
This study is based on the speculation that the Coronavirus outbreak significantly affected commercial air travel. By February 2, 2020, just 2 days after the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency, air travel to and from China was restricted.
The HPWREN team is encouraging users of its products, in this case camera images, to share their stories.
This contributed article is by Kinshuk Govil, CEO of Open Climate Tech, a non-profit organization focused on building open source technologies that have the potential to help mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change.
April 30, 2021
Lessons learned from operating a public wildfire detection system
Limiting the destruction caused by wildfires requires a coordinated effort across numerous projects. In the hope of supporting these efforts, Open Climate Tech, an all volunteer nonprofit, has built an automated early wildfire smoke detection system using images from HPWREN cameras.
April 5, 2021
2020 HPWREN Accomplishments Including One Year Under Covid
2020 was a year to remember for HPWREN and everyone else. The first two and a half months were fairly normal with routine maintenance and upkeep to maintain services through the winter months when generally there is little fieldwork. One significant accomplishment was the installation of the SDGE supported San Juan Hills site including ALERTWildfire and HPWREN cameras in January 2020.
March 17, 2020, marked the beginning of the Covid lockdown in California, reducing field work activities to essential activities to keep HPWREN, ASAPNet, and ALERTWildfire cameras functioning, while all personnel sheltered in place at home working remotely.
March 23, 2021
Water Quality Sensor and Camera Instrumentation at the Tijuana Estuary
By Trent Biggs, Professor of Geography, San Diego State University
Impaired water quality threatens human health and ecosystems, especially in the Tijuana Estuary and Imperial Beach. Contamination events, including from sewer system overflows and malfunctions, can be difficult to predict, and yet there are few real-time water quality monitoring stations in the San Diego-Tijuana Border region. We are developing systems to monitor water quality in real-time using telemetry and advanced water quality monitoring systems.
March 18, 2021
HPWREN Camera Image Access and Download Overview
Images and videos seen on the various HPWREN camera sites, such as /cameras, are available to the public for download from our archives. The only requirement for their usage is to provide attribution to HPWREN (https://www.hpwren.ucsd.edu) if images are published. See /a_and_d.html for details.