Future SDI – Impulses from Geoinformatics Research and IT Trends

The term Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) was defined in the nineties as a set of policies, technologies and institutional arrangements for improving the availability and accessibility of spatial data and information. SDIs are typically driven by governmental organizations, and thus follow top-down structures based on regulations and agreements. The drawback is that it renders SDIs less easily capable of evolving with new technological trends. While organizations are still struggling to implement SDIs, the World Wide Web is increasingly developing into a Geospatial Web, i.e. one that extensively supports the spatial and temporal aspects of information. This article is our contribution to the discussion on the future technological directions in the field of SDIs. We give a conceptual view of the dynamics of both SDIs and the Geospatial Web. We present a picture of the SDI of the future, one which benefits from these developments, based on an analysis of geoinformatics research topics and current ICT trends. We provide recommendations on how to improve the adaptability and usability of SDIs as to facilitate the assimilation of new ICT developments and to leverage self-reinforcing growth

Crowdsourcing sensor tasks to a socio-geographic network

This work describes an approach of a socio-geographic network for crowdsourcing sensor tasks to a human sensor web. Users can register as human sensors at the system by defining their skills and impact area. Based on that information, submitted sensor tasks are forwarded to the most suitable human sensor. Motivated by their willingness to help, users can support others by supplying information about their local environment as responses to sensor task requests. This enables people to retrieve data which is currently not existing or publicly accessible on the Web. A person who is moving to another country and interested in renting a flat without knowing much about its environment is one example for a potential requester of human sensor tasks. Data contributed once to this human sensor web is henceforth available to the public via existing Web 2.0 platforms

Interoperability and Open-Source Solutions for the Internet of Things

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the second International Workshop on Interoperability and Open-Source Solutions for the Internet of Things, InterOSS-IoT 2016, held in Stuttgart, Germany, November 7, 2016. The 11 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 17 submissions during two rounds of reviewing. They are organized in topical sections on semantic interoperability, interoperabile architectures and platforms, business models and security, platform performance and applications

Semantic Enablement for Spatial Data Infrastructures

Building on abstract reference models, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has established standards for storing, discovering, and processing geographical information. These standards act as basis for the implementation of specific services and Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). Research on geo-semantics plays an increasing role to support complex queries and retrieval across heterogeneous information sources, as well as for service orchestration, semantic translation, and on-the-fly integration. So far, this research targets individual solutions or focuses on the Semantic Web, leaving the integration into SDI aside. What is missing is a shared and transparent Semantic Enablement Layer for Spatial Data Infrastructures which also integrates reasoning services known from the Semantic Web. Instead of developing new semantically enabled services from scratch, we propose to create profiles of existing services that implement a transparent mapping between the OGC and the Semantic Web world.JRC.DDG.H.6-Spatial data infrastructure

OGC standards for end-to-end sensor network integration

Many sensor networks have been deployed to monitor Earth's environment, and more are planned for the future. Environmental sensors have continuously improved by becoming smaller, cheaper, more intelligent, and more reliable. But due to the large number of sensor manufacturers and accompanying protocols, integrating diverse sensors into observing systems is not straightforward, requiring development of driver software and manual tedious configuration. Use of standard protocols and formats can improve and automate the process of sensor installation, operation, and data processing. The Open Geospatial Consortium's Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) initiative defines standards which make sensors available over the Web through standardized formats and Web Service interfaces by hiding the heterogeneity of sensor protocols from the application layer. Current SWE standards do not deal with actual sensor protocols, and the connection between sensors and SWE services is usually established by manually adapting the internals of the SWE service implementation to the specific sensor interface. Such sensor "drivers" have to be built for each kind of sensor interface, which leads to extensive efforts in developing large-scale systems. To tackle this issue we have developed a model for Sensor Interface Descriptors (SID) which enables the declarative description of sensor interfaces, including the definition of the communication protocol, sensor commands, processing steps and metadata association. The model is designed as a profile and extension of OGC SWE's Sensor Model Language standard. In this model, a SID is defined in XML for each kind of sensor protocol. SID instances for particular sensor types can be reused in different scenarios and can be shared among user communities. A SID interpreter can be built which translates between various sensor protocols and SWE protocols, hence closing the described interoperability gap. The SID interpreter is independent of any particular sensor technology, and can communicate with any sensor whose protocol can be described by a SID. The SID interpreter transfers retrieved sensor data to a Sensor Observation Service, and transforms tasks submitted to a Sensor Planning Service to actual sensor commands. The proposed SWE PUCK protocol complements SID by providing a standard way to associate a sensor with a SID, thereby completely automating the sensor integration process. PUCK protocol is implemented in sensor firmware, and provides a means to retrieve a universally unique identifer, metadata and other information from the device itself through its communication interface. Thus the SID interpreter can retrieve a SID directly from the sensor through PUCK protocol. Alternatively the interpreter can retrieve the sensor’s SID from an external source, based on the unique sensor ID provided by PUCK protocol. In this presentation, we describe the end-to-end integration of several commercial oceanographic instruments into a sensor network using PUCK, SID and SWE services. We also present a user-friendly, graphical tool to generate SIDs and tools to visualize sensor dataPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

OGC standards for end-to-end sensor network integration

Many sensor networks have been deployed to monitor Earth's environment, and more are planned for the future. Environmental sensors have continuously improved by becoming smaller, cheaper, more intelligent, and more reliable. But due to the large number of sensor manufacturers and accompanying protocols, integrating diverse sensors into observing systems is not straightforward, requiring development of driver software and manual tedious configuration. Use of standard protocols and formats can improve and automate the process of sensor installation, operation, and data processing. The Open Geospatial Consortium's Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) initiative defines standards which make sensors available over the Web through standardized formats and Web Service interfaces by hiding the heterogeneity of sensor protocols from the application layer. Current SWE standards do not deal with actual sensor protocols, and the connection between sensors and SWE services is usually established by manually adapting the internals of the SWE service implementation to the specific sensor interface. Such sensor "drivers" have to be built for each kind of sensor interface, which leads to extensive efforts in developing large-scale systems. To tackle this issue we have developed a model for Sensor Interface Descriptors (SID) which enables the declarative description of sensor interfaces, including the definition of the communication protocol, sensor commands, processing steps and metadata association. The model is designed as a profile and extension of OGC SWE's Sensor Model Language standard. In this model, a SID is defined in XML for each kind of sensor protocol. SID instances for particular sensor types can be reused in different scenarios and can be shared among user communities. A SID interpreter can be built which translates between various sensor protocols and SWE protocols, hence closing the described interoperability gap. The SID interpreter is independent of any particular sensor technology, and can communicate with any sensor whose protocol can be described by a SID. The SID interpreter transfers retrieved sensor data to a Sensor Observation Service, and transforms tasks submitted to a Sensor Planning Service to actual sensor commands. The proposed SWE PUCK protocol complements SID by providing a standard way to associate a sensor with a SID, thereby completely automating the sensor integration process. PUCK protocol is implemented in sensor firmware, and provides a means to retrieve a universally unique identifer, metadata and other information from the device itself through its communication interface. Thus the SID interpreter can retrieve a SID directly from the sensor through PUCK protocol. Alternatively the interpreter can retrieve the sensor’s SID from an external source, based on the unique sensor ID provided by PUCK protocol. In this presentation, we describe the end-to-end integration of several commercial oceanographic instruments into a sensor network using PUCK, SID and SWE services. We also present a user-friendly, graphical tool to generate SIDs and tools to visualize sensor dataPeer Reviewe

OGC standards for end-to-end sensor network integration

Many sensor networks have been deployed to monitor Earth's environment, and more are planned for the future. Environmental sensors have continuously improved by becoming smaller, cheaper, more intelligent, and more reliable. But due to the large number of sensor manufacturers and accompanying protocols, integrating diverse sensors into observing systems is not straightforward, requiring development of driver software and manual tedious configuration. Use of standard protocols and formats can improve and automate the process of sensor installation, operation, and data processing. The Open Geospatial Consortium's Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) initiative defines standards which make sensors available over the Web through standardized formats and Web Service interfaces by hiding the heterogeneity of sensor protocols from the application layer. Current SWE standards do not deal with actual sensor protocols, and the connection between sensors and SWE services is usually established by manually adapting the internals of the SWE service implementation to the specific sensor interface. Such sensor "drivers" have to be built for each kind of sensor interface, which leads to extensive efforts in developing large-scale systems. To tackle this issue we have developed a model for Sensor Interface Descriptors (SID) which enables the declarative description of sensor interfaces, including the definition of the communication protocol, sensor commands, processing steps and metadata association. The model is designed as a profile and extension of OGC SWE's Sensor Model Language standard. In this model, a SID is defined in XML for each kind of sensor protocol. SID instances for particular sensor types can be reused in different scenarios and can be shared among user communities. A SID interpreter can be built which translates between various sensor protocols and SWE protocols, hence closing the described interoperability gap. The SID interpreter is independent of any particular sensor technology, and can communicate with any sensor whose protocol can be described by a SID. The SID interpreter transfers retrieved sensor data to a Sensor Observation Service, and transforms tasks submitted to a Sensor Planning Service to actual sensor commands. The proposed SWE PUCK protocol complements SID by providing a standard way to associate a sensor with a SID, thereby completely automating the sensor integration process. PUCK protocol is implemented in sensor firmware, and provides a means to retrieve a universally unique identifer, metadata and other information from the device itself through its communication interface. Thus the SID interpreter can retrieve a SID directly from the sensor through PUCK protocol. Alternatively the interpreter can retrieve the sensor’s SID from an external source, based on the unique sensor ID provided by PUCK protocol. In this presentation, we describe the end-to-end integration of several commercial oceanographic instruments into a sensor network using PUCK, SID and SWE services. We also present a user-friendly, graphical tool to generate SIDs and tools to visualize sensor dataPeer Reviewe