Coupling Wireless Sensor Networks and the Sensor Observation Service – Bridging the Interoperability Gap

The term Digital Earth was coined in 1998 by Al Gore proclaiming a three-dimensional multiresolution representation of the Earth’s surface holding georeferenced data of any kind (ISDE, 1998). Part of this vision is the ubiquity of observation systems, enabling a digital representation of features such as environmental phenomena with a high spatial and temporal resolution. World wide a vast amount of environmental sensors and other data producers exist, yet measurements as well as their interpretation are rarely put to proper use because of their isolated availability within a specific application domain. Using the internet as a tool for interdisciplinary data exchange, as well as for the extensive usage of heterogonous data resources is an important step towards addressing today’s larger scale environmental problems (Bacharach, 2008). By making measurements and results discoverable and accessible over the internet, producers from different areas can reduce data redundancy and existing data sets can be used to their full capacity. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) addresses this requirement by developing the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) specification series (Botts, 2007). Members of the SWE working group are specifying interfaces, protocols and data types that enable the integration of sensors and sensor webs into (spatial) information infrastructures (OGC, 2008a).