Benefits and challenges of applying Semantic Web Services in the e-Government domain

Joining up services in e-Government usually implies governmental agencies acting in concert without a central control regime. This requires the sharing of scattered and heterogeneous data. Semantic Web Service (SWS) technology can help to integrate, mediate and reason between these datasets. However, since few real-world applications have been developed, it is still unclear which are the actual benefits and issues of adopting such a technology in the e-Government domain. In this paper, we contribute to raising awareness of the potential benefits in the e-Government community by analyzing motivations, requirements, and expected results, before proposing a reusable SWS-based framework. We demonstrate the application of this framework by a compelling use case: a GIS-based emergency planning system. We illustrate the obtained benefits and the key challenges which remain to be addressed

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)

Mercury: using the QuPreSS reference model to evaluate predictive services

Nowadays, lots of service providers offer predictive services that show in advance a condition or occurrence about the future. As a consequence, it becomes necessary for service customers to select the predictive service that best satisfies their needs. The QuPreSS reference model provides a standard solution for the selection of predictive services based on the quality of their predictions. QuPreSS has been designed to be applicable in any predictive domain (e.g., weather forecasting, economics, and medicine). This paper presents Mercury, a tool based on the QuPreSS reference model and customized to the weather forecast domain. Mercury measures weather predictive services' quality, and automates the context-dependent selection of the most accurate predictive service to satisfy a customer query. To do so, candidate predictive services are monitored so that their predictions can be eventually compared to real observations obtained from a trusted source. Mercury is a proof-of-concept of QuPreSS that aims to show that the selection of predictive services can be driven by the quality of their predictions. Throughout the paper, we show how Mercury was built from the QuPreSS reference model and how it can be installed and used.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment (LACIE). User requirements

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS)

In the past decade, science and technology have reached levels that permit assessments of global environmental change. Scientific success in understanding global environmental change depends on integration and management of numerous data sources. The Global Change Data and Information System (GCDIS) must provide for the management of data, information dissemination, and technology transfer. The Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) is NASA's portion of this global change information system

Architecture and Information Requirements to Assess and Predict Flight Safety Risks During Highly Autonomous Urban Flight Operations

As aviation adopts new and increasingly complex operational paradigms, vehicle types, and technologies to broaden airspace capability and efficiency, maintaining a safe system will require recognition and timely mitigation of new safety issues as they emerge and before significant consequences occur. A shift toward a more predictive risk mitigation capability becomes critical to meet this challenge. In-time safety assurance comprises monitoring, assessment, and mitigation functions that proactively reduce risk in complex operational environments where the interplay of hazards may not be known (and therefore not accounted for) during design. These functions can also help to understand and predict emergent effects caused by the increased use of automation or autonomous functions that may exhibit unexpected non-deterministic behaviors. The envisioned monitoring and assessment functions can look for precursors, anomalies, and trends (PATs) by applying model-based and data-driven methods. Outputs would then drive downstream mitigation(s) if needed to reduce risk. These mitigations may be accomplished using traditional design revision processes or via operational (and sometimes automated) mechanisms. The latter refers to the in-time aspect of the system concept. This report comprises architecture and information requirements and considerations toward enabling such a capability within the domain of low altitude highly autonomous urban flight operations. This domain may span, for example, public-use surveillance missions flown by small unmanned aircraft (e.g., infrastructure inspection, facility management, emergency response, law enforcement, and/or security) to transportation missions flown by larger aircraft that may carry passengers or deliver products. Caveat: Any stated requirements in this report should be considered initial requirements that are intended to drive research and development (R&D). These initial requirements are likely to evolve based on R&D findings, refinement of operational concepts, industry advances, and new industry or regulatory policies or standards related to safety assurance

Open Farm Information System data-exchange platform for interaction with agricultural information systems

Information systems for agriculture have been developed from simple data storage and management. They have been designed to support farm-automations or services that employ optimal decision-making techniques by integrating data from other information systems. The interfacing capability of an information system is critical to realizing additional values. Open Farm Information System (OFIS), which is an integrated system for farm management, uses a data-exchange platform to communicate with other information systems based on web-service technology. OFIS data-exchange platform consists of two services: data collection and sharing. For these services, an abstract data collection procedure for external data and data sharing interface used to access internal data stored in OFIS were designed as open interface. In order to evaluate OFIS data-exchange platform, two use cases were illustrated and a data consistency test was conducted. The use cases revealed that the platform was flexible in collecting from various data sources such as web services and serial communication devices. For the data consistency test, the data-collection service collected data from target data sources without any data loss, while the data-sharing service provided all expected data without error