The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Fund for Lake George commissioned IBM to build a sophisticated monitoring system that will help scientists gain new insights into the lake’s ecosystem.

Big Blue said that it will provide the hardware, software and know-how needed to assemble a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster at Rensselaer’s Margaret A. and David M. Darrin `40 Fresh Water Institute. Upon completion, the multi-million dollar platform will provide scientists with the means to transform historical records, real-time sensory data and weather patterns into 3-D models and simulations. These visualizations will help the University’s researchers investigate issues pertaining to the overall health of the Lake George, including rising chlorophyll levels, storm water runoff and the spread of invasive species.

“Lake George has a lot to teach us, if we look closely,” said Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson. “By expanding Rensselaer’s Darrin Fresh Water Institute with this remarkable new cyberphysical platform of data from sensors and other sources, and with advanced analytics, high performance computing, and web science, we are taking an important step to protect the timeless beauty of Lake George, and we are creating a global model for environmental research and protection of water resources.”

The Lake George project is set to raise the bar on predictive preservation. It also provides a big boost to IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative, which seeks to leverage Big Data for the greater good. Smarter Planet shares a number of similarities with Generic Electric’s Industrial Internet initiative, which in turn focuses on turning massive amounts of sensory data into tangible business value.

A few days ago, Amazon revealed that GE will leverage its cloud platform to help enterprises collect and analyze machine data in real-time.