A sensor web architecture for integrating smart oceanographic sensors into the semantic sensor web

Abstract

Effective ocean and coastal data management are needed to manage marine ecosystem health. Past ocean and coastal data management systems were often very specific to a particular application and region, but this focused approach often lacks real-time data and sharing/interoperating capability. The challenge for the ocean observing community is to devise standards and practices that enable integration of data from sensors across devices, manufacturers, users, and domains to enable new types of applications and services that facilitate much more comprehensive understanding and analyses of marine ecosystem. A given kind of sensor may be deployed on various platforms such as floats, gliders or moorings, and thus must be integrated with different operation, and data management systems. Simplifying the integration process in existing or newly established observing systems would benefit system operators and is important for the broader application of diverse sensors. This paper describes a geospatial “sensor web” architecture developed by the “NeXOS” project for ocean and coastal data management, based on the concepts of spatial data infrastructure and the Sensor Web Enablement framework of the Open Geospatial Consortium. This approach reduces the effort to propagate data from deployed sensors to users. To support the realization of the proposed Next generation Ocean Sensors (NeXOS) architecture, hardware and software specifications for a Smart Electronic Interface for Sensors and Instruments (SEISI) are described. SEISI specifies small lower-power electronics, minimal operating system, and standards-basedresearch software to enable web-based sharing, discovery, exchange, and processing of sensor observations as well as operation of sensor devices. An experimental scenario is presented in which sensor data from a low-power glider with low-bandwidth intermittent satellite communications is integrated into the geospatial sensor web using the NeXOS architecture.