It will consist of hardware and software both locally in the owner's office building and remotely in the forests. The data sensors in the forest report at various intervals to the central computer via satellite, packet radio, cell phone, dial-up phone, or dedicated line. The central computer stores and analyzes the information. The users run a wide variety of reports, browsers, historical trend analysis, and future prediction algorithms over the data. Furthermore, given the inherently geographic nature of the data, many of the reports incorporate maps.
Some sensors fall in multiple groups, for example, they report events but can also be queried.
Each packet contains the sensor ID, the time stamp, and the numeric sensor measurement. Configuring the field sensors consists of telling the main program where each sensor is physically located and what type of sensor it is. Additionally, many sensors have different settings for measurement units and errors, reporting intervals, etc. Because this is a 7x24 system, sensors can be replaced at any time, usually with an upgraded model and thus with different measure units, error tolerances, etc. The browsing and analyzing programs are the heart of the system.