It is impossible to imagine the modern world without sensors, or without real-time information about almost everything—from local temperature to material composition and health parameters. We sense, measure, and process data and act accordingly all the time. In fact, real-time monitoring and information is key to a successful business, an assistant in life-saving decisions that healthcare professionals make, and a tool in research that could revolutionize the future. To ensure that sensors address the rapidly developing needs of various areas of our lives and activities, scientists, researchers, manufacturers, and end-users have established an efficient dialogue so that the newest technological achievements in all aspects of real-time sensing can be implemented for the benefit of the wider community. This book documents some of the results of such a dialogue and reports on advances in sensors and sensor systems for existing and emerging real-time monitoring applications.

A core text on principles, laboratory/field methodologies, and data interpretation for fluorescence applications in aquatic science, for advanced students and researchers.

Protecting and maintaining water distributions systems is crucial to ensuring high quality drinking water. Distribution systems-consisting of pipes, pumps, valves, storage tanks, reservoirs, meters, fittings, and other hydraulic appurtenances-carry drinking water from a centralized treatment plant or well supplies to consumers' taps. Spanning almost 1 million miles in the United States, distribution systems represent the vast majority of physical infrastructure for water supplies, and thus constitute the primary management challenge from both an operational and public health standpoint. Recent data on waterborne disease outbreaks suggest that distribution systems remain a source of contamination that has yet to be fully addressed. This report evaluates approaches for risk characterization and recent data, and it identifies a variety of strategies that could be considered to reduce the risks posed by water-quality deteriorating events in distribution systems. Particular attention is given to backflow events via cross connections, the potential for contamination of the distribution system during construction and repair activities, maintenance of storage facilities, and the role of premise plumbing in public health risk. The report also identifies advances in detection, monitoring and modeling, analytical methods, and research and development opportunities that will enable the water supply industry to further reduce risks associated with drinking water distribution systems.

The FAO-ITU E-agriculture strategy guide (available at http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5564e.pdf) is actively being used to assist countries in the successful identification, development and implementation of sustainable ICT solutions for agriculture.The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, and connected analytics has great potential to support and address some of the most pressing problems faced by agriculture in terms of access to actionable real-time quality data. Goldman Sachs predicts that the agriculture sector will be the second largest user of drones in the world in the next five years. Sensor networks based on the Internet of things (IoT) are increasingly being used in the agriculture sector to meet the challenge of harvesting meaningful and actionable information from the big data generated by these systems. This publication is the second in the series titled E-agriculture in action (2016), launched by FAO and ITU, and builds on the previous FAO publications that highlight the use of ICT for agriculture such as Mobile technologies for agriculture and rural development (2012), Information and communication technologies for agriculture and rural development (2013) and Success stories on information and communication technologies for agriculture and rural development (2015). The ultimate aim is to promote successful, scalable, sustainable and replicable ICT for agriculture (ICT4Ag) solutions.