Instrumenting a landscape, using wireless sensors to monitor a watershed from glaciers to river mouths, allows us to better understand the mechanisms governing the circulation of water and thus to improve prediction and management of this valuable resource. Incorporating wireless sensors and actuators in the walls of a building has the potential to reduce its construction and maintenance costs e.g. its energy consumption while increasing the comfort of the users by creating individual microclimates. These are just two examples of how wireless sensor networks will change the way we use information technology: information becomes embedded into our physical environment by means of miniature devices and computers, providing dense sensing close to physical phenomena. This information is processed and transmitted, and actions can be coordinated. The physical environment thus becomes intertwined with the Internet information space, evolving into what we envision as the Smart Earth.

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