Weather, Data , & the planet Earth

I have not blogged for a few weeks, its been sort of busy, with end of year, sorting marking and working out how I can lecture at two colleges. So many slides and lecture notes to prepare.

I have taken Google wholesale into my work pattern, Apple just does not cut it, they are so private, I understand why, but I need to share, so google it is. But this brings me onto a new web page, I so like Sites.Google.com the new version is so easy to use, it still lacks some function, but I can easily use it to create a new site I have made. To this end I purchased Scays.co.uk from the Domains.google.com site, its so easy, and linking it to the new web page just some simple copying of the URL and within about a minute I was up and running. The site is being developed, I want to allow better access to my lectures and slide, it is a work in progress, but it may change.

So what else, I have a major research project trying to understand the weather, how we can look at weather patterns and use the data to help buildings project, weather the weather !, Again its still early day's but open up a lot of different routs from storing building data, to something so simple as, can I give a building an email address. I had to think long and hard on this, but eventually I ground it down to a simple need, if my building needs to communicate with other buildings in a simple mesh to hear about incoming weather patterns how does it do it, and how can other building know were my building is located, and what relationship does it have in it's actual position to all the other buildings.

I wondered about using its actual easting and northing, that might work, or perhaps a simple address, the first line of any address plus the post code, that puts it in common with the postal service and its position. but its a tad long, perhaps easting & northing is simpler.

Storing all this data is the first big hurdle, I have no idea on the actual amount and given building might want to store, I am in talks with several people but as yet the life of a building might be 60 years or more, thats 60x365 or 21915 day or 31536000 hours say we store 5000 separate bits of data every minute, thats 5000x60 or 300,000 bits of sensor data over the 60 years, thats 31536000x300,000 or a staggering 90,000,000,000 data bits over its life time 90bn bits, thats just one building. magnify that by a smart city.

To that extent I am now researching methods of storage, Google is looking very good, with a service called IOT CORE, it's still in beta but it looks very good.

Heritage is also featuring very high in all of this, looking at the way older materials differ to new materials in their performance.

Todays picture is a sketch I made to understand an eaves detail on an old building, and how to water proof it.