Semantically-Enabling the Web of Things: The W3C Semantic Sensor Network Ontology

Editor's Notes

• #3 March 2009 – September 2010 41 people from 16 organisations joined the group 20 attended 10 or more meetings (24 credits in report) Weekly meetings; one face-to-face (at ISWC/SSN 2009) Universities in US, Germany, Finland, Spain, Britain, Ireland Multinationals (Boeing, Ericsson) and small companies Research institutes: DERI (Ireland), Fraunhofer(Germany), ETRI (Korea), MBARI (US), SRI International (US), MITRE (US), US Defense, CTIC (Spain), CSIRO (Australia), CESI (China) http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/ssn/wiki/Main_Page Two main items in the charter http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/ssn/charter An ontology to describe sensors (the ‘SSN ontology’) Semantic markup of SWE documents
• #4 Roughly half of the reviewed earlier work by XG participants
• #5 A sensor can do (implements) sensing: that is, a sensor is any entity that can follow a sensing method and thus observe some Property of a FeatureOfInterest. Sensors may be physical devices, computational methods, a laboratory setup with a person following a method, or any other thing that can follow a Sensing Method to observe a Property Same as ‘sensor’ in OGC’s Sensor ML, Similar to 'observation procedure' in OGC’s O&M An Observation is a Situation in which a Sensing method has been used to estimate or calculate a value of a Property of a FeatureOfInterest. Links to Sensing and Sensor describe what made the Observation and how; links to Property and Feature detail what was sensed; the result is the output of a Sensor; other metadata gives the time(s) and the quality. Different to OGC’s O&M, in which an ‘observation’ is an act or event, although it also provides the record of the event.
• #6 OWL2 ontology, SRIQ(D) 41 concepts & 39 object properties, organised into ten conceptual modules 117 concepts and 142 object properties in total, including DUL Aligned to DOLCE UltraLite
• #7 Four perspectives A sensor perspective, with a focus on what senses, how it senses, and what is sensed; A data or observation perspective, with a focus on observations and related metadata; A system perspective, with a focus on systems of sensors and deployments; and, A feature and property perspective, focusing on what senses a particular property or what observations have been made about a property. World Meteorological Organisation (2009) Intercomparison study of Rainfall Intensity (RI) Gauges (IOM-99_FI-RI)
• #8 Collects together measurement properties (accuracy, range, precision, etc) and the environmental conditions in which those properties hold, representing a specification of a sensor's capability in those conditions. The conditions specified here are those that affect the measurement properties, while those in OperatingRange (of a System) represent the sensor's standard operating conditions, including conditions that don't affect the observations. MeasurementCapabilities are properties – they are observable aspects of a sensor. So we have an observable aspect of a sensors environment (the conditions) being used together with an observable aspect of a sensor to specify these.
• #9 Why a Sensor Ontology? Use data from two precipitation sensors same function, different principles important or not important? The answer is in the World Meteorological Organisation intercomparison study of Rainfall Intensity (RI) Gauges (IOM-99_FI-RI) done in 2009. They have different underestimation thresholds for high rainfall events Vaisala: 801 to 2002 mm/hr RIMCO: 3001 to 5002 mm/hr 1 WMO IOM-99_FI-RI 2 Manufacturer sheet Issue: Basic information about the type or model of sensors is often missing. Knowing the sensor which has been used and its underestimation threshold is a critical input for the analysis of the frequency or severity of extreme weather events.
• #11 1. Manufacture .....................................................................................................................1-1 1.1 Build .............................................................................................................................1.1-1 1.2 Calibration/Test ............................................................................................................1.2-1 2. Operator Commissioning ...............................................................................................2-2 2.1 Acquisition and Logistics ..............................................................................................2.1-2 2.2 Configuration, Calibration, and Test.............................................................................2.2-4 3. Deployment ......................................................................................................................3-5 3.1 Installation, Network/System Connection and Registration..........................................3.1-6 3.2 Command and Control .................................................................................................3.2-7 3.3 Data Generation ...........................................................................................................3.3-8 3.4 Failure Detection, Diagnosis and Repair ......................................................................3.4-9 4. Recovery ........................................................................................................................4-11 4.1 Turn-Off and Removal................................................................................................4.1-11 4.2 Decommissioning .......................................................................................................4.2-11 4.3 Disposal............
• #12 Possibly not at the same level of details
• #15 (e.g. http://lsm.deri.ie/ )
• #17 Important for the transfer of information between users with different needs Sensir manufacturer to Instrumentation specialist to Data users
• #20 Maintenance and tooling: W3C Community Group (open source, non for profit, tied to research projecvts) Transition to W3C standard: W3C Member submission or working group Transition/Linkage with other standard development efforts or for a particular domain: W3C Business Group