Recently, a group of researchers and engineers from the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering at HCMUT – Bach Khoa, UTS, and VNU-UET launched the first IoT-enabled sea environments monitoring station on Xuan Dai bay, Phu Yen province, in the south-central coast of Vietnam.
This launch marks an important milestone in the ongoing development of the project UTS Rapido Vietnam under Aus4Innovation. The project applies Industry 4.0 technologies to the aquaculture monitoring system throughout Vietnam, to build sustainable development communities in the Red River Delta and marine farms along the Vietnamese coastline.
The monitoring station uses the most advanced technologies and designs in the field of robotics, Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, and mechatronics. The station provides monitoring data directly from the sea environment every 5 minutes with processing delay as small as 0.5 seconds. Monitoring indicators include temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, salinity, and turbidity.
The system is designed to withstand tropical storms and the harsh conditions of the sea environment. Advanced automatic mechanical parts are applied for maintenance to prolong sensors. For locations with unstable cellular data links, the system will use the “multi-hop IoT” protocol to transfer data.
It is the first sea environmental monitoring station of its kind in Vietnam, and also one of the few systems in the world that can provide real-time offshore environmental measures under hostile conditions that include annual heavy tropical storms.
The aquaculture industry has an important contribution to Vietnam exports, with a revenue of 7 billion USD each year. One of the major challenges of this strategy is environmental pollution in aquaculture areas related to diseases as the farming density grows to a large scale. The monitoring systems support the local authorities to design appropriate mechanisms to manage and organize farming in a sustainable manner, protect the clean sea environment, and support the burgeoning tourism industry.
