Our paper: CREON – Integrating Disparate Sources of Remote Coral Reef Sensor Data was published and presented at the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium in Cairns, Australia.

The Coral Reef Ecological Observatory Network (CREON) is a grass-roots, self-assembled group of coral reef scientists and engineers working to advance an understanding of coral reef dynamics by facilitating the development of practical environmental sensor networks.

One of the goals of the group is to develop integrated data products and outcomes from the various CREON sites. This paper presents an overview of the use of cloud computing based data architectures, such as Pachube, to deliver integrated data outcomes using a range of disparate real time data from each site. The outputs include simple event detection systems with alerts delivered to social network sites such as 'Twitter'. This allows the multitude of collected data to be reduced to a small number of interesting or meaningful events.

The system is being used to identify local events that may have a global context and as a tool for monitoring these sites. The group also has developed a suite of technologies that looks to lower the cost of entry for deploying sensor networks on coral reefs in areas that are poorly or under-sampled.

A second goal of CREON is to include a greater range of real time coral reef sensor and other data through the use of an open, common cloud based computing infrastructure. This may include providing technology transfer to new sites and groups that are not currently engaged, especially those in areas that do not currently have access to sensor network technologies.