Ethnic Studies 410 Cultural Project - Water and Society

My cultural project relates to the water resources here on Malta. In ES 410, before we left, we learned about the limited water resources that are effecting Malta today and we looked into a little bit of how the government and people were dealing with the insufficient amount of freshwater. Coming to the island, I've been able to get a first hand look at the severity of the shortage and Maltese opinions on it.

Malta's water history is very interesting. The islands of Malta and Gozo is composed of five principle layers; Lower

Coralline Limestone, GlobigerinaLimestone, Blue Clay, Greensand, and Upper Coralline Limestone. Just under the Lower Coralline Limestone layer and above the impermeable Blue Clay level sits two natural freshwater aquifers, the Main Mean Sea Level Aquiferand the Perched Aquifer, respectively. Historically, Malta has used these aquifers for their freshwater, however, today the water is being used faster than it can be replenished by rain and natural permeability of the layers. (Source #1)

Malta's population has grown significantly in past years and continues to grow today.

Just under 400,000 people populate this tiny nation, with a growth rate of 0.42% in 2005, according to the CIA World Factbook. (Source #2) All those people inhabiting the islands require freshwater and lots of it. About one third of Malta's freshwater comes from three aging desalination plants that use Reverse osmosis to extract the salt out of the saltwater from the Mediterranean. Another third is taken from the rapidly shrinking aquifers through manmade boreholes that drill down to the aquifer and pump up water completely free of charge. About one quarter is received through the Water Services' boreholes and the rest comes from small, private reverse osmosis plants or from the islands plentiful private cisterns that collect and store the meager amount of annual rainfall. (Source #3)

In Malta, I've talked briefly with Ph.D student, Keith Buhagiar, a local archeologist interested in the ancient and medieval water management systems spread throughout the islands. He discussed about the differences between wells and cisterns and their creation. Wells are the most ancient water system, and was man's attempt to obtain water by digging vertically down below the spot where water is required. Usually, these wells are circular or square shape vertical shafts. This picture shows a dried up well found in Sicily. (Source #4)

Alternatively, cisterns are more for the collection and storage of water. They were built either through rock-excavation or built at ground level through the use of masonry. Above ground cisterns were not as popular because of their consistent need for maintenance and repair. (Source #4) The picture shows a sonar mosaic of the inside of the Ta-Silg cistern in Malta. Ta-Silg is one of the oldest places with a cistern dating back about 3000 years and living through multiple occupations from the original Temple People to the Phoenicians to the Romans. Some cisterns are quite complicated, like the Ta-Silg cistern, with many rooms and tunnels, while others are simply bell-shaped or circular or rectangular shafts cut into the ground. Sometimes multiple cisterns are clustered together and are connected through small channels. (Source #5)

The situation in Malta changes severity depending on who is giving the opinion. Some don't see the scarcity of water at all while others are being hit very hard with it. Some private homes and farms still use the cisterns and wells settled on their property for various purposes from agricultural water to filtering it for daily use, however, most still rely heavily on the reverse osmosis plants and the shrinking aquifers. With Malta's dependence on tourism and it's increasing population, one thing is for certain, whether the water scarcity is felt by all or not, something must be done to conserve or collect freshwater for the future of Malta. Within the next few days, I am meeting with four members of the Malta Water Association for interviews on this topic. I am hoping to get some good information on their opinions on the water shortage and where this small, heavily populated country is headed.

Sources:

#1 - Malta Water Association (http://maltawater.org/index.php/themes/geological-habitat-of-maltas-aquifers)

#2 - CIA World Fact-Book (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mt.html)

#3 - Malta Takes Control, IEEE Article (http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/maltas-smart-grid-solution/0)

#4 - Keith Buhagiar Presentation on "Maltese Ancient and Late Medieval Water Management Systems" on 3/4/12

#5 - Tour of Ta-Silg Temple Site by David Cardona on 3/13/12

Picture Sources:

Picture #1: British Geological Survey (http://www.bgs.ac.uk/research/groundwater/quality/Malta.html)

Picture #2: Malta Takes Control, IEEE Article (http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/maltas-smart-grid-solution/0)

Picture #3: Picture Taken on Site at Gozo Citadel on 3/12/12

Picture #4: Picture Taken on Site in Palermo, Sicily on 3/6/12

Picture #5: Ta-Silg Mosaic Constructed by Erik on 3/13/12

Picture #6: CIA World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mt.html)

Conquering 9 Cisterns and Welcoming Princeton Students!

It was a very warm day in Gozo today. We got to the farms outside of Victoria, set up our equipment and generator and proceeded to run through 9 cisterns, quickly and efficiently gathering sonar and video and then pulling back up to start again!

Some of the cisterns were quite exciting, like Cistern #1 which we found the hard way was filled with roots! As the ROV was pulled out of the cistern, a blanket of roots covered the entire body. A local farmer helped us to pull the roots out of the motors and off the ROV.

By the last cistern, we were on a roll. We were able to set up, deploy the ROV, scan, and pull the ROV back up in less than 10 minutes! We did have one bump in the road on this cistern, where we forgot to record our scan data, but it was quickly resolved.

When we got home to the apartments, three of the four Princeton Students were already there. We were introduced to Drew, Austin and Yingxue and were informed that Anna was out on a

quick trip to the University of Malta with Jane. The Cal Poly students and the Princeton students decided to take a quick trip to the rocky shore down the road from our apartments and jump in the water. Besides the freezing water, all Cal Poly students and faculty, minus Billy and Jane, managed to get in, even if for just a few seconds.

We returned to the apartment, washed up and ate a great dinner with all 14 of us! Afterwards Timmy came to say goodbye to Zoe and Jane, for the were leaving in the morning. They are very sad to be leaving during such a great time, but they are quite excited to be able to go home again.

Quite a busy and fun day! More tomorrow!

Convento Dei Cappuccini Carini

Phew. Today was full. Zoë and I woke up early to go on a run through some back streets in our town just outside of Carini (in the province of Palermo, Sicily). We meandered through all of the tiny little roads in search of an entrance to the enormous mountains situated nearby, but had no luck. Oh well, we have another half a week to try other roads. When we got back the group was up and ready to rock. We joined up, had breakfast, and loaded into the bus.

On the ride over to the first cistern, our Maltese friend Keith told us loads of information about our cultural research projects: namely gun control laws, engineering degrees from University of Malta, Maltese agriculture and horticulture, and some neat facts about the cisterns that we are deploying into. Keith is a graduate student at University of Malta studying archaeology, and is working on his Ph.D. He's a brilliant guy and we're grateful to have him accompanying us.


When we arrived, we hauled all of the equipment out of the van and crossed the street to the site. There was a horse standing around that distracted everyone for a bit before we set all of the equipment up. After getting the generator running and plugging the robot into the control box, we left the gear to take a small tour of the land from our Sicilian archaeologist friend Toto. He showed us some nearby water storage features that might tell us a little bit more about the cistern that we were deploying into. I walked back to the equipment and waited around for the others to do the same. Once we were all there, we booted up and deployed the robot into the well. The water level was too low to drive around or collect SONAR data (our SONAR was acting sporadically at the time anyways), so we just dropped the robot down and recorded video and depth.

We packed everything up, said goodbye to the horse, and got on our way to the next cistern. This one was located in a small city on top of a large mountain behind our hotel. The cistern was situated in a church courtyard, so we headed through the town and into the church to unpack.


At this point, SONAR was still working intermittently, so we deployed the robot, got a single scan that covered the entire simple bell shaped cistern, and drove around to get images for Tim's stereo imaging project. We did a bit of troubleshooting with the SONAR but had no luck. After packing all the gear up, we had some pizza down town, and drove back to the hotel.

When we arrived, our professors told Tyler, Brent, and I to run through a permutations chart with some sort of logical flow to get the SONAR working before the huge water gallery tomorrow. While we were developing a method that would find the misbehaving piece of equipment in the smallest number of permutations, Tyler fixed the problem (see post below). 15 minutes. Here is the most satisfying and least painful permutations chart ever documented:


PHEW. It works. We coded for a bit, had a 2 and a half hour dinner/fun conversation, and now we're headed to bed.

ROV Deployment and Technical Update

Yesterday was very exciting as we got to go out to a local site in Carini (in the province of Palermo, Sicily) and drive the ROV in two different cisterns. The first site was called Case di Cuetitta and the second was small enough that it didn't have an actual name, but it was also very cool. During the first drive of the ROV I cataloged the location of the cistern through lots of photographs and in the second cistern, I was able to get a sonar scan! it was very interesting and fun to learn about the history of the two sites and to be able to really see the outputted sonar and video scans of both cisterns!

As for my project, I am currently uploading files to complete the website's special actions. Also, Keith, a Maltese archeologist with us, has agreed to do an interview with me about his position on water and society and the importance of cisterns in Malta! So by tonight I hope to have the website files uploaded and good to go and an interview from Keith!

Sicily Cisterns

Sunday morning we woke up quite early (~4:30am) and packed up the apartment to jump on a ferry headed for Sicily along with Keith, a friend and colleague of Timmy Gambin's, who is studying archaeology for his PhD at the University of Malta. The ferry ride was an hour and a half long and rocked us all to sleep, well at least some of us. The ferry landed in Pozzallo and then we took a 4hr bus ride to Carini (in the province of Palermo, Sicily) on the north western side of the island where we are staying at a hotel.

Upon arriving to the site, we unpacked our luggage and then attended a lecture from Keith about water management in Malta and also how it compares to Sicily. This directly ties into our work with cistern mapping and visualization. After the lecture, we got dinner and then ran through a system check to verify all the equipment was working. We ran into some problems when verifying sonar operation; however, during deployment, the sonar decided to behave and provide beautiful sonar scans.

We are scheduled to visit several different cisterns here, which were setup through Timmy (our awesome Maltese contact). So far, we visited 2 cisterns. The location we visited today (Tuesday) is known as Case Cutietta and is located in Carini itself. The location was originally a basilica and is now privately owned. This site is of special interest because 5 years ago during excavation, a mosaicked floor was recovered from the original basilica. The archeologist suspect that the cistern we explored also contains a mosaicked floor as it probably was a Roman room. We deployed the robot and collected sonar scans, and video, but did not find any evidence of a mosaicked floor due to much dirt and debris. The shape of the cistern is rectangular as seen to the right.


Overall, our experience here in Sicily has been great. Besides all the great programming the team has been doing and the field work we experienced today, we still have been able to stroll along the beach and get a whiff of fresh air as well as experience a very evident Italian culture. Keith has been very gracious through providing extensive knowledge about Sicily and the different sites. We have also been relying on him for his translation abilities :)

Tech Update

It's been a busy week here. Yesterday we packed up early in the morning and took a ferry from Valletta, Malta to Pachino, Sicily. From there we hopped a few buses and took a beautiful ride through the country, passing by the world's most active volcano (Mount Etna) along the way. We reached our hotel in Carini (in the province of Palermo, Sicily) in the afternoon and got situated for deployment. Billy will talk about that, so I will cover the other things that have been going on. Despite the nagging fatigue that we are all feeling, there have been some really great project improvements. Since these will also be addressed in similar blog posts, I will give a little update on mine: the archaeologist graphical interface.

I have already put together a majority of the framework for the interface, and recently began loading in cistern meshes. Due to the fact that Billy and Jeff have their code complete (aside from per-cistern fine tuning), the three of us can pump out a cistern model and have it online in about an hour. We will be doing this for each new cistern that we deploy the robot into. My project is still running into some choppiness which will be sorted out in 2-3 days.

Here is a sample of my progress as of today.

Note: If you are running Linux, you may run into difficulty with the Unity3D plugin.

I am still working on the textures/lighting of the cistern and water, the spherical linear interpolation of the rotational trackball (should be a quick fix!), and the photo selection on the right hand side of the interface. It may not be very easy to see, but right now all that the photo selection does is highlight a region on the wall that the selected picture shows. Once the photo selection is complete the model will rotate so that the highlighted area that the picture displays will be more visible and a frustrum with the robot's position and angle of view will be shown. I also intend to use Tim's higher quality go-pro pictures, rather than these stills from the video stream from last year. I might end up adding a big pop-up version of the photo as well. We'll see what happens. Aside from that, it's time to start rapidly uploading and spitting out cisterns as we deploy into them!

SLAM Project Update

Well it has been a while since I was suppose to post this, but that just means I'll have better results. So I've been working on optimizing the SLAM code to generate better maps and also increasing the likelihood of the particles converging for a given set of sonar scans. I started by focusing on filtering the sonar data to optimize the overlap between scans.

Filtering Algorithm

By filtering the data, I can use more of the data already present in the sonar scan to help increase the likelihood of the particles converging.

My next focus will be on refining the filtering algorithm to output cleaner sonar measurements. I also need to work on the scan matching algorithm to load in the first scan at an ideal location where edges won't be cut off. This occurs when the size of the occupancy grid is small and the first scan is loaded in the middle of the map. I'm also waiting for the ROV motor to come in the mail so that I can fix the ROV and then be able to map the pool at the LAIR. This will give us truth data to calculate the error in our algorithm.

Pacheco Elementary Labs and 3D Visualization Update

Hi everyone,

Today was our second of 6 robotics demos for the kids at Pacheco, and things went great! We have done lab #1 both weeks for different classes so far, and the kids love it. The lesson goes something like this:

We show up, the kids come in from recess, and Mrs. Banfield introduces us to them and tells them that we are there to talk about robotics, at which point every kid in the class gasps "OHHHHHHH ROBOTS!!!".

From there I start off with a powerpoint that shows Wall-E bumbling around on the screen collecting balls, and we split up into groups to talk with students about what the know and what they would like to learn about robots. I walk back to the front to ask them questions about better known robots like Roombas, and then Billy gets up to talk about one of the robots that was sitting around in the LAIR. After Billy talks about the brains, arms, and eyes of that robot, we split up into groups again to let the kids design a robot of their own on paper.

After that the fun begins. Tyler and Sara have a competition to see who can build a Lego robot the fastest, and then we ask the kids what they think these robots do. We tell them that the robots brains were programmed to follow lines, so when you lay white masking tape on the black carpet, the robots know how to stay on track. We then demonstrate by allowing each kid to lay down a piece of tape so that a track is made. We put the lego robots on the track and the kids watch as the robots follow the lines (and sometimes collide with each other). After that, we get back into groups to talk about what they learned today, and then I head back up to the front to introduce the solar robots that we will be playing with next time we meet them.

The kids are so enthusiastic about the lesson, and Mrs. Banfield is right there with them. Hopefully we can keep up the great work at Pacheco elementary in the next 4 weeks!




On the 3D visualization front: Jane, Sara, Brent, and I skyped with John "Pathfinder" Lester, who works at ReactionGrid developing 3D environments with which people can model things. He told us about some software (Unity3D and Jibe) with which we can carry out our project for our archaeologist friends. Unity3D is a video game development software that seems to be just what we need. I plan on getting some bigger projects up and running so that in the end, we can have a map of malta with specific sites that can be zoomed into. On clicking a site, a 3D textured version of it will pop up (hopefully with a 3D model of the cistern in it) that will have triggers that bring up descriptions of the area. More from me later!