Geosensor Networks – chances and challenges

1 Overview Sensors are well known in Geodetic Science; also, integrating sensor to sensor networks is not new. This has been done to observe geodetic networks for exact point densification ever since. Traditional geodetic networks consist of a fixed set of dedicated sensors with a given configuration and measurement regime. The processing of the data is usually done in a centralized fashion. Geosensor networks for the observation and monitoring of environmental phenomena are a recent trend in GIScience. What is new is the fact that different sensors act independently, have the capability to communicate and thus the network is able to operate beyond the individual sensors’ capabilities. In this way, the network as such is more than the sum of the individual sensors. Besides their own position, geosensors capture information about the environment, such as temperature or humidity. In the context of engineering geodesy, sensor networks are used for monitoring purposes, e.g. to observe and monitor georisks like hang slides. For the future, a miniaturization of the sensors is envisaged, which eventually leads to so‐called smart dust, i.e. sensors virtually integrated in the environment. This indicates that the number of sensors is typically very high.