SemsorGrid4Env

Sensor networks promise to bridge the gap that, for too long, has separated computing applications from the physical world that they model and in which they are ultimately embedded. Sensor networks are and will continue to be important in environmental management. However, many scientific and technological challenges need to be tackled before sensor networks are exploited in their full capacity for aiding decision support for environmental applications. This project addresses two of these challenges: (a) the development of an integrated information space where new sensor networks can be easily discovered and integrated with existing ones and possibly other data sources (e.g., historical databases), and (b) the rapid development of flexible and user-centric environmental decision support systems that use data from multiple, autonomous, independently deployed sensor networks and other applications.

To address this challenge, the SemsorGrid4Env project  is investigating and developing technological infrastructure for the rapid prototyping and development of open, large-scale Semantic Sensor Grids for environmental management. In particular, SemsorGrid4Env will enable:

As more and more sensor networks are independently developed and deployed, the SemsorGrid4Env outcomes will leverage their use of sensor networks in environmental management scenarios that were not foreseen or that transcend their original purpose. This will facilitate the use of sensor network technology to support environmental decision-making that requires on-the-fly, ad-hoc generation of mashups over data stemming from computations that combine real-time and legacy historical data, both sensed and not. This, in turn, will enable the enacting of decisions based on such real-time sensed data.

To test and demonstrate SemsorGrid4Env results, we propose two environmental monitoring and management use cases:

• Fire Risk Monitoring and Warning, combining fire detectors in a sensor network topology and earth observation products from satellites, to support the activities to be performed in three main stages of the use-case: planning, fire monitoring and fire extinction. 
• Coastal and Estuarine Flood Warning in Southern UK¸ combining established live and historical data sources with a deployment of new sensor nodes with adaptive sampling behaviour.