ACS News

2009 Alcatel-Lucent Broadband Challenge winner awarded Merit Prize of $5,000 for best paper.

On 4 March 2010, Broadband Minister Senator Stephen Conroy handed Chris Goodman a Merit Award of $5,000 for best paper submitted to TJA in 2009 that demonstrates an innovative application of broadband to sustaining the environment, as determined by an independent Judging Panel chaired by Dr Peter Gerrand, TJA’s Managing Director.

The prize, funded by Alcatel-Lucent through its sponsorship of the 2009 Broadband Challenge for the Sustainable Environment and supported in-kind by AARNet, was announced and awarded on Day One of the City of Whittlesea’s National Broadband Network conference ‘The NBN: Possibilities and Practicalities for Local Government’, taking advantage of Minister Conroy’s attendance as the keynote speaker, and his past association with the annual Broadband Challenge.

Chris Goodman’s paper. ‘Bunjil - A Social Network for Proactive Monitoring of Tropical Rainforests.’, explores how broadband networks can be used to support trained volunteers in detecting early evidence of deforestation through satellite photographs, passed around the world through broadband networks like the NBN.

Chris Hancock, CEO of AARNet said, “AARNet is proud to work with the Australian Computer Society and Alcatel-Lucent for this competition as it allows us to deliver new innovations that will support the efforts of global researchers and scientists who have an interest in protecting the rainforests. We are pleased to host Bunjil as it has the potential to solve some of the challenges we face in the world.”

AARNet has come on board as an in-kind sponsor by offering to host Goodman’s application when it is deployed. The large image sizes of satellite photographs are located in the United States at NASA and US Geological Survey. Connecting through AARNet means users have a dedicated bandwidth corridor on both the US NREN and AARNet. This ensures the high availability of data and information can be accessed easily with no constraints. Such an exercise would be difficult to achieve on a commercial Internet network as the program will be limited by cost and bandwidth considerations.

Chris Goodman’s paper can be downloaded free from the February 2010 issue of TJA.