Sensor Web Standards and the
Internet of Things
COM.Geo 2011 Workshop
Expanding GeoWeb to an Internet of Things
May 24th, 2011
Scott Fairgrieve
Geospatial Research and Development
Internet of Things (IoT) Supporting
Technologies/Research Areas*
• Identification Technology
• Architecture Technology
• Communication Technology
• Network Technology
• Network Discovery
• Software and Algorithms
• Hardware
• Data and Signal Processing
Technology
• Discovery and Search Engine
Technologies
• Relationship Network Management
Technologies
• Power and Energy Storage
Technologies
• Security and Privacy Technologies
• Standardization
*From: “Vision and Challenges for Realising the Internet of Things”, March 2010
http://www.internet-of-things-research.eu/pdf/IoT_Clusterbook_March_2010.pdf
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The Role of Sensors in the IoT
• Sensors are important for tagging, tracking, locating, and monitoring things, and for
enabling things to be aware of the environment around them
• Sensors are a key enabler of the IoT and a foundational technology for many IoT
building blocks and related technologies (highlighted in red)
Table From: “Vision and Challenges for Realising the Internet of Things”, March 2010
http://www.internet-of-things-research.eu/pdf/IoT_Clusterbook_March_2010.pdf
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The Need for Sensor Standards
• Sensors are already prevalent today, but they will become even more
necessary and prevalent in IoT-enabled devices and applications
– RFID readers, cameras, accelerometers, GPS, thermometers, etc.
• Sensors are developed by a variety of manufacturers, using many
different protocols and formats, making the interoperability and large
scale sensor integration required by the IoT difficult without standards
• Effective use of sensors to enable and drive the IoT requires standards
for discovering sensors, retrieving sensor data, tasking sensors, and
subscribing to and receiving sensor alerts
The decentralised and heterogeneous nature of things and the entities with which they
interact requires a scalable, flexible, open, layered, event-driven architecture of standards that minimises
or eliminates any bias towards any single programming language, operating system, information transport
mechanism or other technology and makes efficient use of available network connectivity and energy,
where required.*
*From: “Vision and Challenges for Realising the Internet of Things”, March 2010
http://www.internet-of-things-research.eu/pdf/IoT_Clusterbook_March_2010.pdf
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Sensor Webs
“… web accessible sensor networks and archived sensor data that can be discovered and
accessed using standard protocols and application program interfaces (APIs)”
From OGC 07-0165 - OGC Sensor Web Enablement: Overview and High Level Architecture
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Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor
Web Enablement (SWE) Standards
• Help to enable the vision of the Sensor Web by eliminating barriers to sensor interoperability
• Include XML-based messaging formats and web service interfaces for discovering, accessing, and
controlling all types of sensors
• Include built-in support for location and a variety of coordinate reference systems that should address
both outdoor and indoor location
• Sensors, measured phenomena, geographic features, and other items are all identified using Uniform
Resource Identifiers (URIs)
• Built with the Semantic Web and shared vocabularies/ontologies in mind
–
Semantic interoperability is seen as a key building block of the IoT
• The 1.0 versions have been around for a few years, with the 2.0 versions being adopted now. The 2.0
versions include:
–
Better support for asynchronous messaging
–
Improved consistency across standards
• OGC has formed a Pub/Sub Standards Working Group (SWG) to address broader support for pub/sub
technologies across its standards
–
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Should help with real-time /event-driven IoT use cases
OGC SWE Standards
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Encoding
Description
Sensor Model Language
(SensorML)
Describes and models processes, sensors, and systems of
sensors
Observations and Measurements
(O & M)
Format for encoding sensor observation data
SWE Common
A common set of data types for describing sensor data, used by
SensorML and O & M
Web Service
Description
Sensor Observation Service (SOS)
Provides archived and near real-time access to sensors and their
data. Sensors are described in SensorML and sensor data
are described in O & M. Includes optional support for adding
new sensors and publishing their observations.
Sensor Planning Service (SPS)
Provides access to controllable sensors and actuators and the
means to task those sensors/actuators in a standard way.
Sensor Alert Service (SAS)
Provides the ability to subscribe to and receive sensor alerts in
real-time. Utilizes Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol
(XMPP) for delivering alerts in real-time
Sensor Event Service (SES)
Provides Complex Event Processing (CEP) and filtering of sensor
data streams
Web Notification Service (WNS)
Standardized asynchronous messaging/notification mechanism
for receiving messages in many ways, including e-mail, Short
Message Service (SMS), phone, etc.
OGC GeoWeb Standards
These standards complement the sensor web standards and provide geospatial context to
sensor web information in terms of populating mapping applications with maps and feature data
and can support sensor data processing and fusion (e.g. the WPS).
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Encoding
Description
Keyhole Markup Language (KML)
An OGC standard format for displaying geospatial data such as points, lines,
polygons, and images in many mapping applications including Google Earth.
Geography Markup Language
(GML)
An OGC standard format for describing geographic features like points, lines, and
polygons.
Web Service
Description
Catalog Service for the Web
(CS/W)
Provides OGC web service and object discovery (i.e. sensors and other geographic
features)
Web Map Service (WMS)
Provides access to raster map data (i.e. static images) that can be used to
generate a map background.
Web Feature Service (WFS)
Provides access to vector map data (i.e. points, lines, and polygons). Could
provide access to location/information about things in the IoT, since these things
would be classified as features.
Web Coverage Service (WCS)
Provides access to geographic coverage data (i.e. geographically distributed
measurements)
Web Processing Service (WPS)
Provides a standard interface for discovering, describing, and executing geoprocesses.
User Applications - The SWE-Enabled Home
SensorML System
- Thermometer(s)
- Ice/Water Dispenser Switch
- Door Switch
- RFID Reader
Sensor Observation Service
(SOS)
Sensor Planning Service
(SPS)
Sensor Alert Service (SAS)
SOS
Web Notification Service
(WNS)
SPS
SAS
SWE
Client
Smart Appliances
SWE
Smart
Agents
WNS
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User Applications - The SWE-Enabled Home
Sensor Observation Service
(SOS)
Where are my
keys?
RFID Reader
SWE
Client
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Retrieve Inventory Data
SOS
User Applications - The Smart Store
• In-Store Navigation
– Help me find items on my shopping list
– Direct me to each item I want using the
shortest path
• Utilizes multiple OGC GeoWeb and
Sensor Web services as well as other
services
– Need to discover available inventory services
– Find the location of items on my list in local
store coordinates (makes use of
sensors/services for monitoring inventory
locations)
– Show me a local store map (WMS, WFS,
etc.)
– Calculate the shortest path using my current
location along with the locations of various
items (WPS)
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User Applications – Environmental Monitoring
Supplemented with Citizen Scientists
Sensor Observation Service
(SOS)
SOS
Transactional
SWE
Client
SWE
Client
SWE
Client
SWE
Client
SWE
Client
SWE
SWE
Smart
SWE
Smart
Agents
Smart
Agents
Agents
SOS
Official and Reference
Environmental Sensors
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Challenges
• Scaling
– Can/how do the SWE standards work in an IoT environment on a large scale –
billions/trillions or more sensors/“things”?
• Discovery
– How do I find sensor services? How do I make my sensors discoverable? Is there a
central catalog or set of catalogs or a search engine for the sensor web where I go to
find services, or is there some peer-to-peer mechanism where sensors/services notify
me of their availability?
• Performance
– Moving towards event-driven, publish/subscribe, CEP mechanisms to optimize the flow
of information  information can be stored as needed, filtered and sent to the
appropriate recipients/applications
• Standards Harmonization
– Multiple sensor and IoT standards need to be harmonized in order to realize
interoperability across sensor systems
• Big Data
– Sensors and the IoT add to the growing amount of monitoring data that is available to a
wide range of users. How do we effectively analyze all of this data and ensure that
meaningful and relevant data and decisions are made?
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Questions
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Contact Information
• Scott Fairgrieve
– Email: scott.fairgrieve@ngc.com
– Phone: 703-227-1549
• Stefan Falke
– Email: stefan.falke@ngc.com
– Phone: 314-331-6215
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