# The Design and Deployment of an End-To-End IoT Infrastructure for the Natural Environment
## 1 Introduction  
The Internet of Things (IoT) represents the next major step for the Internet as it evolves from a communication substrate that connects computers to one that connects and embraces everyday objects (things). This has the potential to revolutionize many different sectors of the economy and society more generally, e.g., enabling smart cities, smart transport systems, intelligent management of energy supplies, etc., all enabled by data collection from sensors. Most research in the Internet of Things has been carried out in cities and urban areas more generally (see Section 3). We see great potential and, indeed in many ways, an even bigger potential for transformation in applying Internet of Things concepts to rural areas to both gain a better understanding of the natural environment and to manage this environment through appropriate interventions. However, the deployment of Internet of Things technology in the natural environment poses new challenges around, for example, the limitations of power and Internet connectivity and hostile operational conditions. The focus of this paper is on the Environmental IoT project, a first attempt to instrument and manage an environmental catchment in all its facets, across different geographical locations and at all its scales. We also take this a stage further, building on our experiences in the Environmental Virtual Observatory pilot project [1]. This project utilised cloud computing to offer a shared repository of data, models, and other tools and artifacts to allow a range of stakeholders to visualise data, to run models, to feed data into models, to deal with uncertainty in models, and to discuss the results with other stakeholders and communities. The Internet of Things and cloud computing are strongly complementary technologies that, when combined, can provide a complete, end-to-end technological infrastructure for a step change in our understanding of complex environmental factors. This research has the potential to have major impact on many aspects of rural life--on farmers and associated agricultural businesses, the water industry, tourists and tourism related businesses, and society more generally. This has the potential to completely transform these associated businesses, enabling critical areas such as integrated land and water management, coastal zone protection, and precision agriculture. We are particularly interested though in new kinds of science and associated management strategies that stem from bringing real-time data sets together and from observing related interdependencies. Current practices in the environmental and earth sciences focus heavily on standalone data logger systems, with some early initiatives starting to embrace wireless sensor networks for environmental modelling (e.g., References [2; 3; 4; 5]). These initiatives, though, tend to focus on particular environmental facets at particular scales, e.g., focusing on habitat monitoring [6; 7], glaciology [8], permafrost [9], and volcanoes [10]. While wireless networks have become quite sophisticated in many cases, they need a step change in their interoperability, scope, and usability to become functioning Environmental IoT's, which also need to encompass a widespread deployment of spatially distributed devices with embedded identification, sensing, and/or actuation capabilities [11]. The development of a full Environmental IoT would also provide analytical tools to understand the functioning of natural systems based on real-time networks of sensors deployed widely across the landscape. Combined with other existing environmental data (maps of geology, topography, soils, etc.) and model outputs (rain and flood forecasts, etc. ), the Environmental IoT can provide the basis for decision and support systems for an adaptive management of natural resources and for raising alerts. One of the major factors in the slow uptake of the technology from the lab to the field is because most of these systems rely on nonstandard, custom-designed elements that need specialised expertise [5].