Sharing Sensor Data with SensorSA and Cascading Sensor Observation Service

The SANY IP consortium (http://www.sany-ip.eu) has recently developed several interesting service prototypes that extend the usability of the Open Geospatial Consortium “Sensor Web Enablement” (OGC SWE) architecture. One such service prototype, developed by the Austrian Research Centers, is the “cascading SOS” (SOS-X). SOS-X is a client to the underlying OGC Sensor Observation service(s) (SOS). It provides alternative access routes to users (or services) interested in accessing data. In addition to a simple cascading, SOS-X can re-format, re-organize, and merge data from several sources into a single SOS offering. Thanks to the built-in “Formula 3” prototype, a kind of time series library, SOS-X will be enabled to derive new data sets on the fly executing arbitrary algebraic operations on one or more data input streams. This article will discuss the SOS-X development status (focusing at end of 2008), further development agenda in year 2009, and possibilities for using the SOS-X outside of the SANY IP

From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities’ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term ?envirofied? Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management)

A prototype to integrate a wireless sensor network with civil protection grid applications

The present work was performed in the context of the CYCLOPS project, which aimed to exploit the Grid capabilities for Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) applications. The scenario exploited in the present work was the existence of remote wireless sensor networks, which could monitor and transmit real-time data from remote places, in order to prevent or react more accurately to situations of natural disasters. Considering a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) as an instrument, we used the DORII middleware to integrate this instrument with gLite-based Grid computing and storage, allowing an effective and user friendly access to the instrument, as it is required by Civil Protection applications. The mentioned goal was achieved by (i) implementing an Instrument Element and several Instrument Managers, which virtualize the WSN; (ii) developing a Custom Java Interface to connect the Instrument Managers with sensors, performing the translation of the commands/data exchanged between them; (iii) implementing additional modules to permit a long duration (or offline) monitoring, saving the observed data in a database; (iv) implementing a Sensor Observation Service, following the OGC standards, providing the users with access to the database

Adding SOS Core & transactional profiles support to a web thin client

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.In a world where day by day more web applications provide plenty of creative and interesting services, it is important to create similar applications to distribute and spread geographic information easily. In this context, it becomes necessary to develop new web clients capable of connecting with remote geospatial servers, request and retrieve data and allow the user to make a set of operations or just present him or her those results overlaid on a map. Sensor Observation Services (SOS) is a protocol that defines how to interchange geospatial data between a client and a SOS server by using a set of operations classified in three profiles: Core, Enhanced and Transactional. In this document, it is possible to find a description of the software engineering process to create a web client supporting the operations of the Core & Transactional profiles that a user may use without needing additional software

Sensor Networks and Their Applications: Investigating the Role of Sensor Web Enablement

The Engineering Doctorate (EngD) was conducted in conjunction with BT Research on state-of-the-art Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) projects. The first area of work is a literature review of WSN project applications, some of which the author worked on as a BT Researcher based at the world renowned Adastral Park Research Labs in Suffolk (2004-09). WSN applications are examined within the context of Machine-to-Machine (M2M); Information Networking (IN); Internet/Web of Things (IoT/WoT); smart home and smart devices; BT’s 21st Century Network (21CN); Cloud Computing; and future trends. In addition, this thesis provides an insight into the capabilities of similar external WSN project applications. Under BT’s Sensor Virtualization project, the second area of work focuses on building a Generic Architecture for WSNs with reusable infrastructure and ‘infostructure’ by identifying and trialling suitable components, in order to realise actual business benefits for BT. The third area of work focuses on the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards and their Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) initiative. The SWE framework was investigated to ascertain its potential as a component of the Generic Architecture. BT’s SAPHE project served as a use case. BT Research’s experiences of taking this traditional (vertical) stove-piped application and creating SWE compliant services are described. The author’s findings were originally presented in a series of publications and have been incorporated into this thesis along with supplementary WSN material from BT Research projects. SWE 2.0 specifications are outlined to highlight key improvements, since work began at BT with SWE 1.0. The fourth area of work focuses on Complex Event Processing (CEP) which was evaluated to ascertain its potential for aggregating and correlating the shared project sensor data (‘infostructure’) harvested and for enabling data fusion for WSNs in diverse domains. Finally, the conclusions and suggestions for further work are provided

GVSOS: A New Client for OGC SOS Interface Standard

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.The popularity of sensor networks has increased very fast recently. A major problem with these networks is achieving interoperability between different networks which are potentially built using different platforms. OGC’s specifications allow clients to access geospatial data without knowing the details about how this data is gathered or stored. Currently OGC is working on an initiative called Sensor Web Enablement (SWE), for specifying interoperability interfaces and metadata encodings that enable real‐time integration of heterogeneous sensor webs into the information infrastructure. In this work we present the implementation of gvSOS, a new module for the GIS gvSIG to connect to Sensor Observation Services (SOS). The SOS client module allows gvSIG users to interact with SOS servers, displaying the information gathered by sensors in a layer composed by features. We present the detailed software engineering development process followed to build the module. For each step of the process we specify the main obstacles found during the development such as, restrictions of the gvSIG architecture, inaccuracies in the OGC’s specifications, and a set of common problems found in current SOS servers implementations available on the Internet

Five Challenges for the Semantic Sensor Web

The combination of sensor networks with the Web, web services and database technologies, was named some years ago as the Sensor Web or the Sensor Internet. Most efforts in this area focused on the provision of platforms that could be used to build sensor-based applications more efficiently, considering some of the most important challenges in sensor-based data management and sensor network configuration. The introduction of semantics into these platforms provides the opportunity of going a step forward into the understanding, management and use of sensor-based data sources, and this is a topic being explored by ongoing initiatives. In this paper we go through some of the most relevant challenges of the current Sensor Web, and describe some ongoing work and open opportunities for the introduction of semantics in this context