This UCoMS research cluster facilitates cooperation among research teams at three Louisiana Universities: University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL Lafayette), Louisiana State University (LSU), and Southern University (SUBR), enables training and participation of students in energy-related research for possible future employment in DOE-sponsored national labs and the energy sector, and enriches the lecturing materials of various courses offered in all involving institutions. The research cluster is expected to have a lasting positive impact at various levels, strengthening research and IT infrastructure in Louisiana. It brings different research groups from UL Lafayette, LSU, and SUBR in a synergetic and complementary way, and brings academic units and research centers into one team.

The application of various sensors in energy production and management has been widespread practice, with rapid growth in its importance as sensor and wireless technologies mature and their costs drop. UCoMS intends to facilitate gathering massive sensor data and delivering them to the Grids for not only modeling and analysis, but also production management and safety enhancement. Many challenging issues exist to capitalize on ubiquitous deployment of sensor and wireless devices, and technical solutions derived by this UCoMS research will have significant impacts on both basic technologies and various applications.

This portal serves as a unified interface for users to control sensor networks used in their applications and to manage sensor data gathered and delivered over wireless mesh networks to Grids for computation and storage. The configuration of wireless mesh networks can be established by the portal, according to the communication requirements of applications. Storage and computation management of sensor data is handled by the portal as well.