Enhancing IoT Cloud Infrastructure and Data Visualization for Real-Time Monitoring of the Venice Lagoon with Senswich

Monitoring coastal areas and biodiversity hotspots often requires costly solutions such as expensive buoys, leading to significant financial concerns. At the previous MetroSea Conference, the first version of the SENSWICH prototype was presented as a cost-effective, real-time monitoring solution designed specifically for the Venice Lagoon, one of the important areas for research due to its importance as a biodiversity ecosystem and its challenging environment. Despite its initial success, the first-generation SENSWICH encountered specific challenges, including high power consumption, the need for two Arduinos to manage sensors, and sensitivity to electrical interference in saline environments. Also, its design needed some improvements to be more user-friendly. To overcome these limitations, the next generation of SENSWICH has been developed to address these issues comprehensively. The new version discussed in this paper uses one Arduino for managing sensors, lowers power consumption for better efficiency, and has a redesigned and more user-friendly shape with a new plastic cube-shape prototype. Furthermore, data collection has been optimized through the integration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Grafana enhances data visualization. Field-tested in the Venice Lagoon, the new SENSWICH demonstrates sustained monitoring capabilities, offering a good solution for coastal area observation.