Title of Presentation: Sensor Web 2.0: Connecting the Earth's Sensors with the Internet

Primary (Corresponding) Author: Dan Mandl

Organization of Primary Author: Goddard Space Flight Center

Co-Authors:

Abstract: Sensors are everywhere, which includes space, air and ground,. Earth phenomena such as disasters also occur everywhere, such as wildfires, floods and volcanoes. There is a need to rapidly deploy existing sensors to aid emergency workers and investigators. The vision for our effort is to provide users the capability to create ìmash upsî (a web application that combines data from more than one source into an integrated experience), similar to that used by Google Earth users to create a composite map with overlays of sensor information and from other data sources such as weather, traffic, urban construction etc.

Our team developed a prototype demonstration with four satellites, one Unmanned Aerial System, multiple ground sensors, and data algorithms and models to aid wildfire emergency workers. Operators can rapidly assemble customized work flows to produce science products to help manage the wildfires. Whereas the present mash ups integrate a variety of data sources, this projectís mash ups trigger workflows that actually task sensors via a common interfaces based on Open Geospatial Consortium web service standards. The web services are created in a Representation State Transfer (REST-ful) service oriented architecture style. Thus the sensors which originally all had unique interfaces can now be accessed via common point and click interfaces. The architecture features Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant, platform independent web service interfaces, self-describing Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) compliant automated work flow engines to automatically customize data products, self-describing sensor nodes, self-describing data processing nodes and decision support systems. Finally, discovery over the Internet is enabled by wrapping the sensors node, data processing nodes and workflows in Internet news feeds which can then be aggregated by Internet news aggregators such as Google burner. Thus, users can then discover these capabilities using common terms.

This technology, using Web 2.0 technology to enable access the Earthís sensors is an emerging mega-trend which will lower the cost of producing customized science by an order of magnitude. This paper will outline the key aspects of our experiments to date and implications for the future and in particular the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) international effort.