The Sony Computer Science Laboratory initiated a long-term collaboration with the Physics Department of Oxford University and the U.K. Met Office. The Oxford University Department of Atmospheric Physics is among the leading world centres in climate simulation. They are launching a new major scientific experiment, the Millennium Experiment, to reconstruct the climate of the past 1200 years using the U.K. Met Office’s climate model.

Sony CSL Paris’ research has led to an optimised version and a low-power version of the climate simulation. The first version speeds up the computation of the model, which reduces the total energy requirement. The second version runs the simulation in the background without requiring additional energy, thus allowing users to participate in the project with 50% less energy compared to earlier experiments.

More information about the project and on how you can participate can be found here.

Team: Peter Hanappe

Collaboration: U.K. Met Office (Olivier Boucher, Nicolas Bellouin), University of Oxford (Hiro Yamazaki, Tolu Aina), Anthony Beurive

Social tagging allows users to associate tags with information items, such as music files, texts, pictures, etc. At CSL we are investigating how social tagging can be used as a component of community memories to annotate aspects of the environment as experienced by people. Concrete projects are under way within the context of the Tagora EU Project.

Team: Nicolas Maisonneuve, Peter Hanappe

Additional funding: Tagora

A Mobile Sensing Network augments mobile devices, such as mobile phones, with sensing capabilities. Through the use of custom, generic sensor interfaces, we aim to turn these devices into mobile measurement stations for measuring aspects of the environment.

We are currently experimenting with sensors attached to mobile phones and software to localise, upload and aggregate the sensory data. Social tagging adds a layer of meaning to the quantitative information which is visualised through websites and on the mobile device itself.

Team: Nicolas Maisonneuve

Project: NoiseTube

The project will be presented at the Sony CSL Open House 2009 on Oct. 9.

Better awareness of environmental issues requires better models and this implies high performance scientific computing. This project is investigating how we can harness the power of the CELL processor to significantly increase the scope and precision of environmental simulations, particularly those relevant for climate prediction.

Team: Peter Hanappe

Collaboration: Met Office UK (Olivier Boucher), Oxford University, Atmospheric Physics (Hiro Yamazaki), Anthony Beurive