Wireless sensor networks originally designed to monitor data center server farms by IBM are being deployed in new environments where they repurpose software analytics and cloud computing capabilities to solve a wider array of societal problems. Wireless sensor networks, composed of nodes called “motes,” can monitor local environmental factors like temperature, humidity, barometric pressure and even corrosion, sending a constant stream of data to analytic software running on cloud computers. Originally developed to prevent maintenance headaches at data centers, IBM is now repurposing them to solve a variety of societal problems, such as preserving irreplaceable works of art.
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