E-SMART system for in-situ detection of environmental contaminants. Quarterly technical progress report, April--June 1996

General Atomics (GA) leads a team of industrial, academic, and government organizations to develop the Environmental Systems Management, Analysis and Reporting neTwork (E-SMART) for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), by way of this Technology Reinvestment Project (TRP). E-SMART defines a standard by which networks of smart sensing, sampling, and control devices can interoperate. E-SMART is intended to be an open standard, available to any equipment manufacturer. The user will be provided a standard platform on which a site-specific monitoring plan can be implemented using sensors and actuators from various manufacturers and upgraded as new monitoring devices become commercially available. GA`s team members include Isco, Inc., Photonic Sensor Systems (PSS), Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), Science & Engineering Analysis Corporation (SECOR), and the U.S. Air Force Armstrong Laboratory Environics Directorate at Tyndall AFB(AL). Specifically, the E-SMART team will develop the following three system elements: (1) A new class of smart, highly sensitive, chemically-specific, in-situ, multichannel microsensors utilizing integrated optical interferometry technology, (2) A set of additional E-SMART-compatible sensors and samplers adapted from commercial off-the-shelf technologies, and (3) A Data Management and Analysis System (DMAS), including network management components and a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) for data evaluation and visualization. In addition, the E-SMART TRP team has signed Articles of Collaboration with another DARPA TRP awardee, Sawtek, to develop an E-SMART-compatible Intelligent Modular Array System (DMAS) for monitoring volatile organic chemicals (VOC`s) in the environment. This collaboration will simplify the network development required to field the IMAS sensor, and will encourage the adoption of the E-SMART standard by increasing the number of commercially available E-SMART sensors