Underwater bioinspired sensing: New opportunities to improve environmental monitoring

Smart environmental monitoring networks are a growing part of the Internet of Things (IoT). They are useful to detect, forecast and assess human impacts on the environment as well as the effects of climate change on society. As climate uncertainty grows, we will increasingly rely on these networks to address significant societal challenges including the reduction of available drinking water, diminished agricultural productivity and growing threats posed by extreme weather events on human health and safety. Bioinspired designs can lead to a new generation of devices to ensure that environmental monitoring networks remain accurate and reliable over a wide range of physical conditions. The Instrumentation and Measurement (IM) community is responsible for measuring, detecting, monitoring and recording a vast range of physical phenomena. As such, IM researchers should lead the development of new types of standardized bioinspired sensors which can be integrated into the highly valuable and urgently needed IoT-based environmental monitoring networks of the future. As an example, we show how fish-like underwater bioinspired sensing can improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of monitoring upstream migration.