Sensor Web Standards and the Internet of Things

May 24th, 2011

Scott FairgrieveGeospatial Research and Development

COM.Geo 2011 WorkshopExpanding GeoWeb to an Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) Supporting Technologies/Research Areas*

• Identification Technology

• Architecture Technology

• Communication Technology

• Network Technology

• Network Discovery

• Software and Algorithms

• Hardware

*From: “Vision and Challenges for Realising the Internet of Things”, March 2010http://www.internet-of-things-research.eu/pdf/IoT_Clusterbook_March_2010.pdf

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• Data and Signal Processing Technology

• Discovery and Search Engine Technologies

• Relationship Network Management Technologies

• Power and Energy Storage Technologies

• Security and Privacy Technologies

• Standardization

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

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The decentralised and heterogeneous nature of things and the entities with which theyinteract 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 2010http://www.internet-of-things-research.eu/pdf/IoT_Clusterbook_March_2010.pdf

Sensor Webs

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“… 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

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

– Should help with real-time /event-driven IoT use cases

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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.

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OGC GeoWeb Standards

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 geo-processes.

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).

User Applications - The SWE-Enabled Home

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SWE Client

Adjust Temperature, Other Settings

Receive Inventory, Food/Filter Expiration, Other

Alerts

Retrieve Inventory, Temperature, Other

Data

Smart Appliances

WNS

SWESmart Agents

Ale

rts

Grocery List Order New Filter

E-mail, text Grocery

List

AlertsE-mail, text Alerts

SensorML System- Thermometer(s)- Ice/Water Dispenser Switch- Door Switch- RFID Reader

SensorML System- Thermometer(s)- Ice/Water Dispenser Switch- Door Switch- RFID Reader

SPS

SAS

SOS

Sensor Observation Service (SOS)

Sensor Planning Service (SPS)

Sensor Alert Service (SAS)

Web Notification Service (WNS)

User Applications - The SWE-Enabled Home

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SWE Client

Retrieve Inventory Data SOS

Where are my keys?

RFID Reader

Sensor Observation Service (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

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SWE Client

SOSTransaction

al

SWE Client

SWE Client

SWE Client

Register Sensors, Insert

Observations

SWE Client

SWESmart Agents

SWESmart Agents

SWESmart Agents

SOS

Official and Reference Environmental Sensors

Sensor Data from “official” Sensors

Crow

d-Sourced Sensor

Data

Sensor Observation Service (SOS)

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