ICEX Program featured in Think Magazine

The ICEX Program is featured in the new issue of Think Magazine. Think is the new quarterly research magazine that opens a window to the University of Malta. It tells the stories of students, alumni, researchers, and professors. Read the article at:

"Maps, Bots, and a Neolithic Site: The Underwater World Beneath Tas Silg" (pp. 40-46)

http://issuu.com/thinkuni/docs/think02

Back Home! (and missing Malta...)

We are all safe at home and missing Malta. I hope everyone enjoyed the trip, and I want to thank you all for working so hard these last few weeks. My appreciation for our Maltese hosts cannot be overstated. The time, effort and dedication that they committed to this project are the critical pieces to our success.

I am still amazed at the type of learning and success achieved. As a team we collect data in the field (sometimes literally a field, other times in castle tunnels...), we manage the data, we develop algorithms to process the data, and we use these algorithms to produce archeological maps (all before the day's end). As usual, the students have impressed me with their ability to do this in a foreign setting. Lets hope we get lucky again next year...

Thanks again!

Ciao Ciao!

Thank you everyone for the unforgettable experience that was ICEX 2012. While I am happy to have a plentiful supply of water and a reliable internet connection back at Princeton, I still deeply miss Malta and the trip in general. Although I was only there for a little over a week, I had a great time getting to know all of the Cal Poly students as well as working with them and our friends in Malta. Above all, this trip has shown me how interdisciplinary and collaborative computer science can be. Having the opportunity to work with archaeologists and scientists on another continent was not something I thought I would get to experience while in college. It was also nice to be able to do some sightseeing in addition to working all day and all night. Malta is a beautiful country and I was lucky enough to have had my first visit to Europe include this island. Thank you to Prof. Clark as well as Profs. Lehr and Wood and Dr. Gambin for making this trip possible!

Goodbye Everyone

As Austin and Anna have already said, I also really enjoyed the trip to Malta and am very thankful for this unique opportunity to not only travel to a different country and learn about their culture and history as well as collaborating with all the students and professors from Cal Poly. Even though we came late, the Cal Poly students helped us become comfortable in this new environment quickly and answered any questions we had.

Even though I appreciate the comfort of my own room, I really do miss working with everyone in Malta (coding at night, taking data and doing outreach during the day, and playing cards on those rare nights people unglued themselves from their computer screens). The most important things I learned was how to adapt to unexpected problems in the field and to persevere no matter what. There were many examples where we had to improvise, like when we could not get into a site in Mdina or when it seemed like we would not be able to find the shipwreck, but we tried new things and eventually worked through it.

This trip was stressful at times, but also strangely relaxing, not having to worry about other classes or meetings or having to answer a hundred emails a day. It's too bad we couldn't stay for longer and get to know Jane and Zoey better! Thanks for sharing with us your experiences and I hope to see some of you guys again in the future!

Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish!

After a long week, I managed to survive the long flight home (though I'm sure the Cal Poly students had it much worse), and I'm now back home in Princeton. I had a blast in Malta; I saw great sights, had great food, got a lot of good data, and made some good friends.

I'm going to miss a lot of things about Malta: better soda, the metric system, and living next to the beach. However, I think the thing I will miss most is being able to experience a different culture first hand. You only get a few opportunities to talk with people who have a very different background and perspective on the world, and I really enjoyed it this time.

I also really loved getting to know all the Cal Poly students; they were a ton of fun to work with. I wish them all the best of luck with your research projects and in everything you do.

Goodbye, and thanks for a great trip!

Computer Science and Information Technology in Malta Part 2

I was lucky enough to have the chance to interview Dr. Matthew Montebello, a professor in the Information and Communication Technology Department at the University of Malta. He was an invaluable resource for my project. Here is some of the information I learned from him and other resources.

One could argue that the status of Computer Science and Information Technology in Malta all starts with education. The University of Malta offers a three year full time Bachelor's Degree, a five year part time Bachelor's Degree and a two year Master's Degree. The Master's Degree can either be awarded based on research or teaching[2]. For a Ph. D., Dr. Montebello said that it is more customary for students to travel abroad but recently the University of Malta has started offering some Ph. D.'s in the fields of Computer Science and Information Technology[3].

I asked him about the change in the number of students in the department. He replied that the number of students have increased over the past 10 years but just very recently has plateaued and started to decline[3]. When questioned as to the cause of this phenomena he believed that the number of students has reached its maximum for the country[3]. I also asked him about the number of women students in the department and he estimated it to be less than 10%[3].

He also told me that since Malta is such a small country, much of the faculty have contacts in industry. This allows the them to arrange job placement within industry for many of the students. Industry is itself so important to the Information and Communication Technology Department of the University of Malta that they have their own committee dedicated to it[3].

We then started to discuss the industry itself. He told me that there is a massive demand for developers especially in testing and Information Technology consulting[3]. He also mentioned that casino style gaming is one heavily present part of industry in Malta[3].

It turns out that Information and Communication Technology isn't just important to the university but also to the Maltese government. They even have a Ministry for Investment, Industry and Information Technology[1]. Dr. Montebello even told me that the Maltese Government have made a push for international companies to come to Malta with laws exempting these companies from taxation upon for building a branch in Malta[3].

From my research I believe that I can conclude that Computer Science and Information Technology has been and will be a significant industry in Malta as seen by the advantages of the few resources needed, the investment in research in both the public and private sectors, the status of education and the role the government is taking in the industry.

Works Sited

[1]"Department of Information." Department of Information. Web. 26 Mar. 2012. .

[2] "Faculty of ICT - Faculty of ICT - University of Malta." University of Malta. Web. 26 Mar. 2012. <http://www.um.edu.mt/ict/>.

[3] "Interview with Dr. Matthew Montebello." Personal interview. 23 Mar. 2012

Continuing the Water Battle

In Dr. Gordon Knox’s article “Water – A Crisis?” published in October 2008, 2.5% of Earth’s surface water is in the form of freshwater, the rest is considered salt water. Of the 2.5%, 68.9% is locked in ice, 30.8% is groundwater and 0.3% is in lakes and rivers spread across the world. A very small amount of freshwater is available for the world, and we are running out.

The last few days in Malta were jam packed with information about Malta's position and future concerning water and the limited amount within the boundaries of the tiny country. The Malta Water Association is focusing on spreading the awareness about the critical condition that Malta is in. I was able to meet with 4 of the about 15 members of the Malta Water Association (MWA) and discuss their opinions.

In an interview, Mr. Julian Mamo, Water Engineer and Member of the MWA, described the decrease in knowledge about water scarcity. He described how his grandparents were very aware of the water levels, because they were required to use the rivers and cisterns spread throughout the island. When the three reverse osmosis plants that currently run were built, however, many people stopped worrying about water. Where as before you had to walk down to the local cistern or river, now all that needed to be done was turn the faucet on. Water became more accessible, more easily attainable, and therefore less of a concern.

According to the members of the MWA, Malta's freshwater aquifers will not last, with it even being predicted that it's end will be during our lifetime. There are two freshwater aquifers in Malta, the Perched and the Mean Sea Level. The Perched Aquifer sits above Malta's Blue Clay layer and the Mean Sea Level lies just under the island, above the very salty, very dense sea water of the Mediterranean and under the Lower Coralline Limestone layer.

In the recent past and today, the freshwater aquifers are being depleted faster than they can be replenished by rainwater, due to numerous boreholes that have been drilled through the layers of rock and clay and pump up unknown amounts of water daily. There are about 8,000 registered boreholes, with thousands of other unregistered, and unwatched. One would think that the solution, then, is simple; register all the boreholes and use technology to watch the amounts of water that are being pumped up through them. However, questions arise on how to do this. How would you find every unregistered borehole? Could you make people register something they don’t claim to have? How much money would have to go into a project like this to see a successful completion? The answer: a lot. Short of visiting every home in Malta, there is no for sure way to record how many boreholes there are or whether or not people have them.

According to “Water – A Crisis?” in 2007, the measured ground water that was being extracted through registered boreholes was about 13.4 million cubic meters per year. Estimating for the unregistered boreholes, add 16 million cubic meters and there is a grand total of about 29.4 million cubic meters per year being pumped up from the freshwater aquifers.

Another threat to the aquifers is contamination. The Perched Aquifer sits just below many farms and fields, and with the increasing use of pesticides and chemicals for growing crops is in danger of being contaminated. The chemicals used for plants and fertilizers seep down through the rock layers and into the Perched Aquifer, and as Dr. Gordon Knox stated during an interview, once an aquifer is contaminated, there is nothing you can do to clean it there. You would need to pump up the water and clean it through a plant, taking millions of dollars and a lot of time.

The Mean Sea Level Aquifer is also in danger of being contaminated, but by multiple factors. The first factor is the same as the Perched Aquifer, chemicals from fertilizers and pesticides. In the same way that the chemicals seep through to get to the Perched Aquifer, the Mean Sea Level Aquifer has chemicals dripping into it through the rock layers above. It has been estimated that it can take up to 40 years for the farming chemicals to filter through the rock layers and into the aquifers, which means that the chemicals that are reaching the aquifers now, are from the 1970s. Usage of chemicals and pesticides has only increased since that time, which would implicate that there are many more chemicals dripping through the rock and will infiltrate the aquifer in the near future.

As if this wasn’t concerning enough, another factor that plays a large role in the contamination of the Mean Sea Level Aquifer is the sea itself. The freshwater that sits above the dense, salty seawater is a lens, protected by the bottommost rock layer. Currently only the edges of the freshwater lens gets contaminated by the salt water, however as the freshwater is depleted, more and more freshwater is mixed with salt water, making the aquifer less and less usable for the Maltese without first going through the reverse osmosis plants, taking time and money.

There are numerous other opinions and questions that arise when discussing the Malta water situation. However, one detail has come up time and time again, something must be done. The MWA specifically is trying to spread awareness about the increasingly concerning situation. The educational system has also begun to put effort into changing this lack of awareness, by adding a new chapter to the teaching curriculum and teaching young children about water and Malta. Thus the process has begun, but its not enough. For people to simply be aware isn’t enough to solve the problem, action must be taken and taken quickly.

The future of Malta at this moment is cloudy. There is no way to confidently predict what will happen when. So whether Malta will be able to begin saving its aquifers and using its own water or whether the reverse osmosis plants will be run at full power and glass bottles of water will be continually shipped from Italy, is uncertain. At the rate that Malta is going, it seems that rescued aquifers are a long shot and the reverse osmosis plants will need to increase production to serve the islands of Malta.

St. Edwards College

On Tuesday (Mar 20th), we went to St. Edward's College to do some outreach to a class of 5th grade students. St. Edward's College is a school that provides education from Kindergarten through Sixth Form, where Sixth Form is a pre-university program. The outreach consisted of a half hour of teaching them about mobile robots and another half hour of programming binary robots. This was a great experience for us as well as the 5th graders.

In conjunction with the outreach, three of the students explored 2 cisterns at the school during the outreach and then we all explored another cistern in the recess area. The St. Edward's College students that were on recess at the time were very intrigued by the robots and couldn't help but try and get as close to the computer screen as possible.

The cisterns were interesting and can be seen in the images below. We had some trouble with the last cistern. The tether got wrapped around a pipe, which limited how far we could explore. We didn't figure this out till we were pulling the robot out of the cistern. In future expeditions to Malta, this site will be on the list.

Cistern 1

Cistern 2

Cistern 3

Outreach at University of Malta

Our last day in Malta was spent doing outreach again, this time at the University of Malta. We set up on a few tables in front of a fountain at the university and deployed the ROV into the fountain. Both students and professors gradually came over to our display, curious about what we were doing. After giving a few interviews and answering questions about the research we've been doing in Malta, we let the students and professors drive the ROV a bit around the fountain. We even attached a wrench to some foam and threw it into the water for them to retrieve with the ROV -- a potentially non-trivial task. In the end the outreach was a success and we met many people who were eager to learn about robotics and the work we've been doing.

Shipwreck Hunt

Wednesday, we headed over to the harbor between Silema and Valletta and boarded the Isis, a small boat owned by the Aurora Trust, to look for a shipwreck with the ROV. We were hunting for a WWII fuel barge that was stationed in Malta by the British. The barge, which was used to supply fuel for submarines, was sunk decades ago during an attack on the harbor. The previous ICEX team was able to find the wreck, so we were hoping to find it and take some nice sonar scans.

The team was split into two groups; the first group (Drew, Tyler, Sara, Eric, and Tim) wasn't able to find the wreck due to strong currents and (as we later found out) not-so-accurate GPS coordinates. The second group (Austin, Yingxue, Anna, Brent and Prof. Clark) was able to find the wreck after a 45 minute search.

The ~20 meter long wreck is situated along a slope so that bow is about 16 meters deep and the stern is only about 5. Prof. Clark was able to get a good number of sonar scans along the length of the wreck (using the smart tether); hopefully we can make some kind of a map using them, though they seem to be quite messy.

Water and Farming: Final Reflections

I have had the privilege to interview a number of the members of the Malta Water Society this week. From these interviews I gained a number of new perspectives about the water and farming situation here in Malta. Unfortunately, most Maltese people do not seem as aware or concerned about the severity of the water problem here in Malta as I and many water experts believe that they should be. Similarly, most people do not seem to be aware that the current water issues are making hardships for farmers.

The main issue at the moment is water quality in the main aquifer. As mentioned in my last post, the main aquifer is a large lens of freshwater that is perched just above sea level. High extraction rates have reduced the lens of water to the point where some wells are drawing brackish water. Obviously, salt and plants do not mix well. This is becoming an increasingly severe problem for farmers who rely on the lower aquifer for fresh water. The question at the moment seems to be how long it will take for the fresh water lens to collapse to the point where it is unusable, and then how long it will take for the lens to recover. Even if extraction were stopped today, members of the Malta Water Association think that it will take a number of years for the lens to recover.

The need for the aquifer to replenish itself brings up the topic of alternative sources of water. The most plentiful alternative at this point is recycled sewage water, or gray water. Three sewage water treatment plants have already been built on Malta, but the water from them is not being utilized. The water could be either further refined and reintroduced into the main water system, or piped out separately to farms. Unfortunately, while the plans exist to utilize this gray water for farming, the funding is not yet available.

In the event that water from boreholes becomes too salty to use and farmers are required to use water from a central system they would probably need to pay for it. Despite a probable discount for water used on agriculture, it would be important for farmers to consider the economics of the crops that they grew. As Dr. Knox pointed out, certain crops take more water, and other crops take less water. For Malta, it would be best for farmers to choose crops that take the least water to grow and leave the other crops to be grown abroad and imported. After all, some areas of the world have much more rain water than Malta. These are places that are ideal for growing water intensive crops without environmental impact.

Because so few people recognize the water problem on Malta it will be difficult to prevent the degradation of the central aquifer. As a result, at some point in the future, farmers may be required to take water from a central system which will limit the types of crops they can grow economically.


One more issue that I found out about is the entrance of nitrates into the lower aquifer. Nitrates can come from both sewer water and fertilizers. Unfortunately, the water in the aquifer is already unfit for human consumption because of these nitrates. This means that continued use of chemical fertilizers could further damage the lower aquifer. This is an unsustainable and unwise course of action. Instead, organic farming methods could be used, which avoid the use of chemical fertilizers.

As mentioned in prior posts, the government has not heavily promoted organic farming to either the population or the farmers. Standard consumers do not look for the organic label, and the majority of farmers have not bothered to become organically certified. Organic farming, however, should be encouraged to reduce the amount of contamination in the lower aquifer, among other reasons.


Based upon the information I collected this week, I think that water is going to be an increasingly difficult issue for farmers. Those who rely on water from the central aquifer and not from cisterns might need to make some adjustments to keep their farms economical. It will also be important for all farmers to consider using organic fertilizers to reduce the contamination of the central aquifer. I doubt that Maltese farming will die out, but I do think adjustments should be made to compensate for the current state of the environment.


I would like to thank Keith Buhagiar, Dr. Gorden Knox, Julian Mamo, and Philip Grech for taking the time to talk to me about water and farming this week.

Finishing Up!

Today was a work day for the team, and we all made excellent process. Drew and I have finished video editing, and Jeff and Billy are hard at work on the final maps. We should have everything completed and uploaded to the final database within a few hours! We're all very excited, although it is somewhat upsetting to have our time here on Malta drawing to a close.

My official project on the team was the visualization of cisterns using projective texturing. Today I was able to make the last few tweaks to my texture blending, and have been successful in producing some pretty nice looking visualizations!

These visualizations consist of three main components; texture projections, shading, and blending. The textures, captured from the GoPro cameras on the ROV, are filtered by hand to choose the most pleasing and appropriate textures. After this, the program loads the textures with a list of coordinates and 'projects' the texture onto the wall of the model, using matrix transformations to generate texture coordinates per vertex in the vertex shader.

Shading creates a rudimentary form of light on the model, giving it the illusion of depth and dimension. In this case, only a basic diffuse shading is used. More advanced lighting is not necessary, as the textures are already lit as seen by the robot.

Blending creates a smooth transition between textures by scaling back the per-texture contribution on areas of overlap. This image shows the fragment shader being used to calculate the regions and magnitude of texture overlap. These calculations are then multiplied by the diffuse shading value and then the texture sampler to determine the value of each pixel of the cistern and produce the final visualization:

A History of Post-Secondary Maltese Engineering Educations

Last week, the ICEX faculty had the opportunity to meet Professor Carmel Pulè, faculty in the Department of Electronics Systems Engineering at the University of Malta. Dr. Pulè has played an influential role in the development of engineering education in Malta during the last 45 years. He graciously shared his contact information with the faculty, and I contacted him by email earlier this week to ask him about the similarities and differences of the engineering educations provided by MCAST and University of Malta.

His response was fiery and passionate, but well informed and based on an experience with the Maltese education system that few others have had. I’m lucky to be able to hear his story, and am excited to share it. The following is a summary of his account of the history of the Maltese engineering education. It largely focuses on the history of the development of the different engineering degrees offered today by the University of Malta and the Malta College of Arts, Science, and Technology (MCAST). In my next and final blog post, I will discuss some of the statistics concerning the two post-secondary schools and elaborate on the ways in which this history has affected each institution.

**Some comments about the Institutions of Education in Malta by Professor Carmel Pulè (18 Mar 2012), summarized by Erik Nelson **

Malta lived under British rule for around 150 years (up until 1964), so most of the economy was devoted to establishing and maintaining a skilled workforce for military needs. The British established their own schools in Malta that trained Maltese students in naval studies, military technique, and other similar forms of education. Of these schools, the Dockyard Naval School at Senglea was the best, manned by extremely qualified British teachers. Most students graduating from this school followed a six-year trade apprenticeship and the best students were given an opportunity to go to Britain and proceed to work at Chatham, Devonport, and Portsmouth. Some of these highly skilled Maltese would then return to Malta. (Note: The important role of the Dockyard Naval School as a site of technical education had previously been highlighted for us by Timmy Gambin during our tour of the Maritime Museum the first week.)

In addition to the post-secondary educational opportunities provided by the British military, in the time period prior to independence in 1964, there was the old University of Malta, which had been established by the Knights of Saint John 400 years earlier. At the time, the university focused on arts, culture, and education in the traditional professions of law, medicine, and religion. It offered no Engineering courses. (Research prior to our trip indicates that the size of the student population at the University in the 1950s was approximately 200 students per year.) This lack of attention to technical education was mirrored in Maltese teacher training colleges and at the Lyceum – the “junior college” that students attended in between secondary education and enrollment at the University of Malta.

Since the University of Malta did not provide any engineering degrees, pathways to technical education that were not provided by the British military were largely apprenticeship-based. A number of vocational schools were established beginning in 1945. However, these trade schools were not primarily focused on producing academically trained engineers. (An exception to the lower-level vocational-only focus was the Technical College at Paula, which offered Ordinary and Higher National Certificates and Journey Men Certificates and produced students who were able to compete successfully against other students in the British Commonwealth and whose degrees were recognized abroad.)

Up until 1960 (aside from the years of World War II), life in Malta was tranquil. The country had gotten used to its tie to Britain, and had sufficient economic influx to maintain its peaceful lifestyle. However, circa 1960 it became clear that Britain would not be able to continue financial support for its ‘oversea empire’, including Malta. Maltese politicians and educators became aware of this, and realized that secondary and post-secondary education should be shifted in such a way that the product of the University of Malta would be a labor force for a self-supporting nation. This labor force would be, by necessity, largely composed of engineers. The University of Malta did not agree with this outlook, and continued to offer its traditional degrees while rejecting the development of courses in engineering.

Meanwhile, Britain (in conjunction with UNESCO) decided to finance a new technical institution in Malta called the Malta College of Arts, Science, and Technology (MCAST). The goal of this new college was the same as the goal of the aforementioned Maltese politicians: to produce workers whose skills would be useful to a competitive independent economy post-independence. The subjects included were mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, tourism, finances, accounting, and economics.

After independence in 1964, the Maltese government did force the University of Malta to offer degrees in engineering. Students who could meet the admittance qualifications at the University of Malta – which involved Religious and Maltese Language qualifications – were able to earn B.Sc degrees in engineering at the University. Students who did not meet the Religious and Maltese Language qualifications were able to earn a Diploma in Engineering at

MCAST instead by taking the same coursework. Professors from MCAST – such as Professor Pulè, who had returned from England in 1969 to take a leadership position at MCAST – were required to teach the B.Sc as well as the Diploma students, but were not offered any additional compensation for doing so (in contrast to the medical doctors at St. Luke’s who also taught at the University and received additional salary). For Professor Pulè, who was the first Maltese to earn a PhD in engineering, this continued lack of respect for academically focused engineering education by the University was incredibly frustrating.

Thus, while the University had yielded to the government in a sense, it still refused to shift its focus from the arts, culture, and traditional professions of medicine, law, and religion to the work that Professor Pulè and the Maltese government had identified as necessary – producing a highly skilled, technically focused workforce for an independent Malta. The University also continued to refuse to offer degrees in finances and accounting or to increase attention to the training of secondary teachers who were qualified in technical fields.

The situation came to a head in 1978, when the Maltese government (under the leadership of Prime Minister Mintoff) cut funding to the University of Malta because of its refusal to make these changes. The “Old University” literally disappeared from the map. MCAST was shut down at nearly the same time, and its entire staff, all of its students, and its subjects were transferred to the “New University of Malta.” The New University had roughly ten times as many students as the Old University (a total of 10,000 students), and initially focused only on offering degrees with direct economic benefit (such as engineering and tourism). As Professor Pulè put it, “the modern professors [had] stepped in to University surroundings.” Many faculty members from the Old University left Malta and took positions in England and Saudi Arabia.

Beginning in the 1980s, the (New) University of Malta began to expand its focus to teach all the old subjects plus the new subjects of Engineering, Science, Mathematics and Computer Science. Today, the University has many associated subject institutes focused on topics such as sustainable energy. However, in Professor Pulè’s opinion, even the technical courses in today’s University of Malta have become too soft and theoretical, with not enough emphasis on hands-on work and hardware. Its engineering degrees have less lab-based courses than most other universities, and the work with computers largely focuses on accounting, economics, banking, video games, and personal media communication rather than embedded systems, image processing, and robotics. According to Professor Pulè, this means that Malta has recently lost out on investing and manufacturing opportunities with international companies such as Lufthansa.

Thus, Professor Pulè began to work in the 1990s for the opening of a new MCAST that would provide more hands-on education. The goal of this process was to produce high-caliber engineers who have a firm technical and hands-on background. His desire came true, and the “New MCAST” opened in 2000.

However, Professor Pulè is not entirely satisfied with the new MCAST. According to him, the new MCAST had a slow start due to the fact that it was under staffed and poorly funded. Initially, instructors from the old trade schools were hired, many of whom did not have proper university qualifications. Additionally, Professor Pulè believes that the examination standards of MCAST are not sufficient. While MCAST offers ample hands-on training, Professor Pulè has found the opposite problem from the new University of Malta: the coursework of MCAST is not theoretical in the least. For example, MCAST’s course in Plant Maintenance does not include thermodynamics – a topic necessary to the class. While Professor Pulè was excited that Professor Maurice Grech was brought in to take over MCAST approximately five years ago, he is concerned that the degrees awarded by MCAST are not equivalent to engineering degrees at other universities. More broadly, Professor Pulè is concerned that the standards of admission to both MCAST and the University of Malta, and examination while at university, are too low.

Today Professor Pulè remains hopeful about the development of his vision of high quality engineering education in Malta. He continues to believe that Malta must produce high-caliber, technically focused, creative engineers, educated via a combination of theoretical and hands-on training in order to create a truly independent and successful Malta. At the same time, Professor Pulè sees a continued role for vocational training. Above all, Professor Pulè wants Malta, its government and its citizens, to commit to the hard work of the development of a practical workforce and to maintaining high standards in its educational system.

References:

[1] Pulè, Carmel. "A Few Questions about MCAST vs. University of Malta." E- mail interview. 18 Mar. 2012.

Water and Farming in Malta

Continuing in my exploration of farming on Malta, I am posting the information I have collected thus far about the debate on borehole metering. Eventually, I hope to draw conclusions about the relative value that Maltese people place on farming given their reluctance or willingness to devote water to the production of crops.

Note that boreholes are used to retrieve ground water from the lower aquifer that is common to all of Malta. Fresh ground water may be pumped from a layer of water that resides in the limestone of the island just above sea-level. These boreholes are different from the wells, cisterns, and water galleries that we have been studying with our ROV on this trip. Those features are used to store water locally, while boreholes draw from the common aquifer.

The other main source of water on Malta is from reverse osmosis plants. The water from these plants is fed into the main pipe system and then delivered to everyone across Malta. Part of the current issue is that some people would rather extract water from boreholes than pay to get it out of the main system.


There are typically two viewpoints behind water usage in Malta. The first viewpoint is that water is a public resource that is to be used by anyone and everyone as they see fit. They would argue that if someone took the time to drill a borehole into the water reserves, that person should be able to use the water from that borehole as they please. Another idea is that once the government is given the power to meter water, they will not be able to give up that power. Eventually, water will be controlled to the point of rationing for everyone on the island, which they think should be unacceptable to everyone. These are just a few of the comments I found on the Malta Times website in conjunction with articles related to water metering.

I would tend to agree, however, with those who feel that water should be conserved for the future of Malta. At the moment a number of companies are taking unfair advantage of the water supplies for their own benefit. Bottling companies regularly extract large amounts of water from the reservoirs to avoid the expenses of reverse osmosis. Similarly, some hotels, laundry mats, and swimming pool owners take an unfair advantage of this scarce resource. One estimate in an article from the Times of Malta put the extraction rate at 40,000 liters of water per minute. With metering on boreholes everyone would need to pay the same rate for water so that no one bottling company would have an advantage over others because of easier access to water.

Now, the question to ask is how does this relate to farming? Farming takes a lot of water, and metering boreholes would mean that farmers are required to pay for their crop water. Obviously, those who support free water for everyone would support farmers in continued water extraction. It is important to note that those who favor metering seem to support farmers as well. In particular, some of the comments in favor of metering cite the fact that farmers rely on aquifer water to grow their crops and in recent years the water has become increasingly salty due to over extraction. Other comments indicated that farmers should not need to pay for water because they already have a difficult time competing with larger agricultural countries like Spain. In short, I didn’t find any negative comments about farming, which supports the idea that the Maltese want to keep farming on Malta.


I looked at a number of activist groups to find more perspectives on the water and farming situation. The most interesting group that I found was the Malta Water Association. They argue that Malta’s lower aquifer is deteriorating every year and that action is needed to correct the situation. With regard to farming, they suggest that the government invest in the development of Treated Sewage Effluent systems and then supply the resulting water to farmers as an alternative to water from boreholes. They suggest that all boreholes should be metered, including agricultural boreholes, to measure the amounts of water that are being drawn from the lower aquifer. They recommend that all non-agricultural boreholes should be immediately closed to prevent further damage to the aquifer. Finally, they want the government to establish a national Agriculture Policy to regulate crop irrigation. All of this suggests that the group supports agriculture, but only if it is managed correctly.


A paper produced for the Maltese government entitled the National Climate Change Adaption Strategy took a similar stance to water and agriculture as the Malta Water Association. It recommended that increasing quantities of treated sewage water should be used to augment the current water supplies of farmers. The report notes that policies should be developed to increase the flexibility of agricultural systems and reduce trends that will lead to increased global warming. It also recommends that organic farming should be further promoted as it is a good sustainable alternative to conventional farming. In general this climate change adoption document seems to support farming as an important resource for Malta to have, even if it thinks that farming needs to be improved.

It is important to note that, at the moment, farmers do not pay for much, if any, of their water. According to a 2007 CIHEAM Analytic report, water consumption levels for the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector was a mere 4%. This means that most of the water required for growing crops, which is significant, is drawn through boreholes. If farmers were required to pay for their water, they would have a significantly harder time, financially, to grow their crops.

Looking at the resources I have come across, it seems that people want to support agriculture. Some sources have suggested that farming could be improved for the modern era. For example, irrigation schemes and organic farming could enhance the existing farming methods. However, people seem to want to protect their water supplies to ensure that they still have both good water and food. There are no direct ties between agriculture and national identity, at least none that I have found, but there is still a desire among people for agriculture to continue.


Malta Times Articles:

“Private sector extracting 40,000 litres of water from boreholes...per minute”. Times of Malta. 27 Jul 2011. Web.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110727/local/policy-on-metering-of-private-boreholes.377577

Xuereb, Matthew. “Price would serve as ‘deterrent’”. Times of Malta. 14 Sep 2010.

Schembri, David. “Close down all private boreholes”. Times of Malta. 28 Jul 2011.

Schembri, David. ”Private boreholes ‘a social injustice’”. Times of Malta. 8 Nov 2010. http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20101108/local/private-boreholes-a-social-injustice.335158


Website of Maltese Water Association:
maltawater.org

Military History

Imagine this:

You are a small schoolboy around eight years of age. You are living with your many brothers and sisters on the island nation of Malta. The year is 1942. Your brother is chasing your sister around the streets with a severed lizard tail while she runs screaming, laughing around the city. Below the steep bastions of Valletta, cranes creak and groan and steel hammers play their endless rhythm to the crowded, bustling harbor.

Suddenly, the hammers fall silent. The men on the docks abandon their posts and start up the bastions all at once. You know before you ever even hear the siren; another air raid. That high, piercing warble spins up in every street and town of the island. Your siblings turn and run, and you join them. As you make your way inside the walls of the fort, you find your mother. She is scared. She is always scared. She has your youngest sister already tucked in her arms, struggling to hold her against her pregnant belly.

The doors to the shelter are open, and you can see the soft electric lights glowing from within the tunnel. They fixed the power since this morning! Excellent! The shelter warden marks the families coming in, slowly growing his ledgers. As your group dives downward into the dark, cold earth, your sister stumbles and falls over some of the rubble left by the excavators, hard at work on another chamber. They're supposed to keep their sites clean so this doesn't happen, but I suppose there are more important matters to attend to.

Julian, one of your family friends, knows your mother is due soon. She offers your family her spot on the bunk racks. Mom squeezes in with you and your youngest sister and prepares for the coming onslaught. The hundreds crammed into the small chalky room hold their breath as one as the screaming siren slowly winds down. And then you hear it. *boom* Still far off, good. *boom* *boomboom* Drawing closer... *BoomBoomBOOM* *BOOM* The walls shudder, the bunks creak and sway, dust pours down from the ceiling. The lights shudder once, twice, and go out. The bulbs are safe here, but the three kilometers of cable up top are certainly not.

Between the blasts you can year the soft chatter of the Bofors 40mms, and the occasional thump of a QF 3.7. Give 'em hell, Dad. And what is dripping on your leg? It seems the elderly gentlemen in the bunk above is not entirely consistent. Lovely. The sickly mother below hacks a few times with a healthy bout of tuberculosis. Medicine is hard to come by; the last three convoys have been sunk by German Stukas before they ever made it to harbor. The dank caves and dwindling rations are taking their toll as well. She better get help soon, or she'll be another casualty of the caves, her children adopted by the next family.

Suddenly, mother wrenches over and cries out. Doctor, doctor, the baby is coming! What horrible timing little one; can't you wait until the Germans have finished their own delivery? The doctor is called up from the first aid room. He pushes his way through the crowds as mother is helped free from the tiny bunks. You wait in the main room with your siblings while mother is whisked away to the birthing room. Clean tiles line the floor here, not dirt. A small sink and even a cabinet (the last timber shipment you saw was certainly over a year ago) allow the doctor to do his work. Mother's screams carry well in the tight tunnels, rivaling the pounding of the bombs above. *BOOMBOOM* *BOOM* Today is an especially heavy load; there must be no ships in the area for the planes to harass.

At last, the newest member of your family emerges. "It's a boy!," doctor cries out to the bunk room. But the celebration is short lived. Clackers, like the playing cards in your bicycle (before it was destroyed by falling rubble) echo down the hallways. Gas! The refugees in the room writhe as masks are fetched and passed around. Heavy carpets are rolled over all of the entryways to the chamber. A stranger (but we're all family here) helps your brother into his mask, then tucks your little sister into an infant shroud.

The bombs are less frequent, but just as close. Slowly, the air becomes painfully stale as the 500+ bodies around you consume the fresh oxygen. The smell of feces and burnt oil grows stronger and stronger. A small family is huddled around a shrine cut into one of the walls, working their rosaries. God save our house. God save our friends. God save our souls. Your gas mask clouds over with condensation, and you lay there blind.

You hear the distinct screaming shudder of an airplane slamming into the rock. The mangled propeller and cracked gauges will make an excellent museum exhibit one day. Not long later, the bombings finally wind down. It's been over three hours since you came down here. The warden sounds the all clear, and the march begins to the surface. Outside, the devastation is fierce. A solid quarter of the town has been levelled. Huge craters have replaced the streets. Great plumes of oily smoke belch out from the harbor; two ships are sinking, soon to join the sea of masts and superstructures already protruding comically from the harbor floor. Another three are badly damaged. The aircraft guns finally silent, the men rush for stretchers and fire equipment. Their work today has only just begun.

Just like that, your brother is at it again, chasing after your sister with a worm. He acts as if nothing has happened. They came once already this morning, and they'll be back again before supper. For him, for you, this is life.

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Sunday was my trip to the war museums on Malta. It was a fantastic day, and I got to see a great deal. I was able to take as much time as I needed at the displays, and even got my own personal tour from one of the curators. I hopped off the bus for a few unplanned stops as well, such as the Maltese Society of Model Makers exposition and the Grand Master's palace.

The biggest surprise to me over the course of the day was the extent to which Malta was involved in, and affected by, the Second World War. I knew from my research that the island was bombarded several times by both Italian and German air forces. It wasn't until I actually saw the displays and read the stories that I realised the extent. This island was not a peripheral, no secondary target. It played a front line roll in the European theater. The Allies used Malta as a home base for their naval strikes throughout the Mediterranean, and cracking Malta has a high priority indeed for the Axis powers.

Civilians were never targeted in the attacks, but the fact is in a place as small and dense as Malta, with military structures and support everywhere, there is nowhere to hide. British defences were brutal though, and axis pilots faced heavy losses. In the fierce aerial battles above, pilots often had little or no time to designate their mission targets; drop the load and get out of there!

Raids were constant. There would be dozens of attacks some days, then none for a week while an allied convoy passed nearby, ripe for the picking. Overall, Malta faced more than 2000 raids over the course of three years, with more than 6000 tons of bombs dropped. This makes the island the most heavily bombed landmass of the war. However, despite the brutal attacks, there were only some 2000 civilian casualties of a 270000 person population, thanks in large extent to the excellent shelters on the island. While conditions were horrible, they were well constructed and stood strong throughout the bombardments.

After my tours of the war museums, I made my way to Fort Rinella for a special show on firearm evolution. I arrived just in time for the day's main presentation. A line of re-enactors stood in a field, each one dressed in period garb with a rifle fitting their costume. Over the course of an hour, they worked their way from the original black powder musket up to the Thompson submachine gun, explaining all of the technical progressions along the way. For each era, the actor would step forward and fire a volley at his natural pace. While the musketeer took close to three minutes to load and fire a single shot, the submachine gun chewed through 30 rounds in a few seconds. An excellent demonstration of evolving technology!

One of the most interesting facts I picked up was the evolution of copper-jacketed bullets. A lead ball is designed to do as much damage as possible, killing its adversary. However, during the industrial and logistical warfare of the Great War, armies realized that it takes about five men to clear a wounded soldier from the battlefield, but no men to clear a dead soldier. Faster, smaller bullets were designed not to kill but to maim, clogging the supply lines with doctors and medical supplies instead of petrol and ammunition.

After the talk, I milled about with the other members and presenters at the show. One member of the Maltese army identified me almost immediately as service, and we chewed the fat for a while before he let me play with some of the more current hardware he had with him. What an excellent opportunity! As I had expected, the firearm culture in Malta is incredibly lax; anyone who is interested in shooting has no problems obtaining a license and a firearm. Ranges are as prevalent as I had expected, and they are heavily utilized by both military and civilian alike. The Maltese soldiers I spoke to have the opportunity to train with their RPGs and MP5s as often as every few weeks! Obviously the crowd was very biased, but I got the vibe that this is just how things work on Malta. I had also talked to the driver for my scuba trip on Saturday, a born and bread Maltese man, about shooting on the island. He explained to me that while he was a bird man (and recommended several good avian reserves for me to see), he felt that the hunters were mostly well behaved, and it was the actions of a few malicious ones that tarnished the reputations of the rest.

My research day went fantastically, and was a strong highlight of my time on Malta. I learned a great deal about the island's roll in history, and have a whole new appreciation for Maltese resilience during WWII. These people went through hell and back! The cross on the Maltese flag, the George Cross, was actually awarded by the King of England in 1942 as an acknowledgement of the incredible tenacity of the Maltese. It has been a rewarding and educational experience, and I tip my hat to Malta and her steadfast resilience.

Gozo Underwater Cave Mapping

Today gave us an opportunity to obtain some long-awaited data from a cave in Gozo. At 7am Timmy drove us to Manoel Island Yacht Marina where we met our skipper, Paul. After carrying all of the equipment on the boat, Austin, Tyler, Prof. Clark, Paul and I departed and began our 1.5 hour voyage to Gozo. Apart from some heavy chop in the beginning of the trip, the day was beautiful and the ride presented some incredible views of Malta, Comino, and Gozo.

When we arrived we ran across some tour boats which continued to come to the cave throughout the day, but for the most part we enjoyed uninterrupted access to the cave. In addition to being the first time we had mapped a cave, today was the first time we had ever used the Smart Tether. The Smart Tether is an advanced piece of equipment that contains nodes every couple of meters which use accelerometers, rate-gyro sensors, and magnetic sensors to track the orientation and position of the ROV. The Smart Tether greatly increases the accuracy of our ROV localization which in turn helps us create better maps.

In each of our experiments we took turns piloting the ROV, logging data and sketching maps, recording sonar and Smart Tether data, and working the Smart Tether. We started off using the sonar to take horizontal scans of the underwater cave, but we weren't able to get that far into the cave before running out of tether. We decided to add the 80 meter extension to our 40 meter Smart Tether, which allowed us to venture much deeper into the cave. This time we attached the sonar vertically and got some great scans with well-defined cistern-like walls. We ran across many fish, jellyfish, and even an octopus which grabbed onto the ROV. After backing out of the cave, we deployed one more time with the Smart Tether extension to take horizontal sonar scans. We ultimately got about 60 meters in before turning back. Before leaving, we made sure to shoot some underwater video of the ROV with one of the GoPros we brought along.

If all goes well, we should be able to use this data to create 3D maps of the caves using a combination of the horizontal and vertical sonar scans for mapping and Smart Tether logs for localization.