Use of Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) Standards in Environmental Monitoring

摘要

The small consortium, supported by the Technology Strategy Board, has recently completed a two year project to research how an open, standards-based sensor web approach can be used to improve data gathering in natural environments such as lakes and rivers. By investigating the practical issues arising from the development of a generic sensor web-based control and information system, the "SWIMA" project has shown how an open middleware layer, situated between the User and the sensor and communication networks, can help to both improve capability and reduce costs. The same standards can be used in information systems covering both in-situ and remotely-sensed data. A web-based information system has been developed to support field trials at the Upper Tamar Lake in North Devon. This system, which includes secure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) user management, is based on maturing "Sensor Web Enablement" (SWE) geospatial standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The core SWE standards demonstrated include services for observations and measurements (Sensor Observation Service: SOS), alerts (Sensor Alert Service: SAS) and planning / tasking (Sensor Planning Service: SPS). These service interfaces are supplemented by a notification service (Web Notification Service: WNS) for translating messages into a variety of common formats, e.g. email. The full members of the consortium are: QinetiQ, the Environment Agency of England and Wales; South West Water; 1 Spatial Group Limited; YSI Hydrodata Limited and the University of Nottingham's Centre for Geospatial Science.