SSW

From Knoesis wiki
Revision as of 21:06, 6 January 2010 by Cory (Talk | contribs)

Jump to: navigation, search

Semantic Sensor Web

Millions of sensors around the globe currently collect avalanches of data about our environment. The rapid development and deployment of sensor technology involves many different types of sensors, both remote and in situ, with such diverse capabilities as range, modality, and maneuverability. It is possible today to utilize networks with multiple sensors to detect and identify objects of interest up close or from a great distance. The lack of integration and communication between these networks, however, often leaves this avalanche of data stovepiped and intensifies the existing problem of too much data and not enough knowledge. With a view to alleviating this glut, we propose that sensor data be annotated with semantic metadata to provide contextual information essential for situational awareness. In particular, we present an approach to annotating sensor data with spatial, temporal, and thematic semantic metadata. This technique builds on current standardization efforts within the W3C and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and extends them with semantic Web technologies to provide enhanced descriptions and access to sensor data.

Research Topics

Semantic Modeling and Annotation of Sensor Data

As networks of sensors become more commonplace there is a greater need for the management and querying of these sensor networks to be assisted by standards and computer reasoning. The OGC's Sensor Web Enablement activities have produced a services-based architecture and standards, including four languages for describing sensors, their capabilities and measurements, and other relevant aspects of environments involving multiple heterogeneous sensors. These standards assist, amongst other things, in cataloguing sensors and understanding the processes by which measurements are reached, as well as limited interoperability and data exchange based on XML and standardized tags. However, they do not provide semantic interoperability and do not provide a basis for reasoning that can ease development of advanced applications. Ontologies and other semantic technologies can be key enabling technologies for sensor networks because they will improve semantic interoperability and intergration, as well as facilitate reasoning, classification and other types of assurance and automation not included in the OGC standards. A semantic sensor network will allow the network, its sensors and the resulting data to be organised, installed and managed, queried, understood and controlled through high-level specifications. Ontologies for sensors will provide a framework for describing sensors. These ontologies will allow classification and reasoning on the capabilities and measurements of sensors, provenance of measurements and may allow reasoning about individual sensors as well as reasoning about the connection of a number of sensors as a macroinstrument. The sensor ontologies will, to some degree, reflect the OGC standards and, given ontologies that can encode sensor descriptions, understanding how to map between the ontologies and OGC models is an important consideration. Semantic annotation of sensor descriptions and services that support sensor data exchange and sensor network management will a serve similar purpose as that espoused by semantic annotation of Web services. We will use as an input for this objective ongoing work on SML-S which in turn borrows from the SAWSDL (also a W3C recommendation) for semantic annotation of WSDL-based Web Services, and SA-REST for semantic annotation for RESTful services. This research is conducted through the W3C Semantic Sensor Network Incubator Group (SSN-XG) activity.

Semantic Sensor Observation Service

Many people and organizations in the sensors community, both producers and consumers of sensor data, are already heavily invested in the SWE suite of specifications from the OGC. To support this existing community and evaluate the validity of our approach, we must interoperate with SWE technologies. The SWE specifications represent a well reasoned model of the basic structure and characteristics necessary for sensor and observation descriptions. However, as previously discussed, they are syntactic models, and therefore we have chosen to integrate Semantic Web technologies into the existing SWE framework by creating a Semantic Sensor Observation Service, or SemSOS. SemSOS extends the open source 52North SOS implementation with methods for accessing an ontological knowledge base in order to provide high-level queries and reasoning over sensor data.


Active Perception

Trust on Semantic Sensor Web


People


Publications


Presentations

  • Amit Sheth delivers talk on Semantic Sensor Web at Advancing Digital Watersheds and Virtual Environmental Observatories II session of AGU Fall Meeting, San Franscisco, December 17, 2008.
  • Amit Sheth delivers talk, "Semantic Sensor Web" at ARC Research Network on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing, ISSNIP, Melbourne, Australia, August 1, 2008.
  • Cory Henson delivers talk, "Semantic Sensor Web" at the Semantic Technology Conference, May 18-22, 2008, San Jose, California.
  • Amit Sheth delivers invited talk, "Semantic Sensor Web" at the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) WG of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) held in St. Louis, MO, March 26, 2008.
  • Amit Sheth delivers talk, "Semantic Sensor Web" at the Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice Special Conference, February 5, 2008, Falls Church, VA.
  • Cory Henson delivers talk, "Semantic Sensor Web" at the Sensor Standards Harmonization WG Meeting, January 15, 2008, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, Maryland.
  • Amit Sheth delivers talk, "Video on the Semantic Sensor Web" at the W3C Video on the Web Workshop, December 12-13, 2007, San Jose, CA, and Brussels, Belgium.
  • Amit Sheth delivers talk, "Semantic Web techniques empower perception and comprehension in Cyber Situational Awareness" at the ARO Cyber Situational Awareness Workshop, November 14-15, 2007, Fairfax, VA.


Ontologies and Datasets


Prototypes, Demos and Tools

  • Sensor Discovery On Linked Data: prototype
  • Semantic Sensor Observation Service (MesoWest): demo
  • Semantic Sensor Observation Service (Buckeye Traffic): demo
  • Video on the Semantic Sensor Web: demo


Contact Information: Cory Henson

Retrieved from "https://wiki.aiisc.ai/index.php?title=SSW&oldid=1413"