Semantic Sensor Web Enablement for COAST

Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) is an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that facilitates discovery and integration of web-enabled sensor data. We propose two enhancements to SWE. One is the creation of Semantic Sensor Web Enablement (SSWE) through the annotation of SWE services and schema using ontologies. This will allow the utilization of the SWE services using semantic queries and concepts as opposed to purely syntactic ones. An integrated sensor ontology would also help fuse data from heterogeneous sensors and associated SWE services. The second enhancement is the use of intelligent software agents to help automate the extraction and handling of relevant data from the SSWE. Together, these two enhancements will make it easier for geospatial browsers like COAST to discover and utilize web-enabled sensor data. We provide two methods by which COAST users can benefit from SSWE. One is through one or more WMS servers which will mash the data through SSWE and provide a regular WMS interface to COAST; in this method, no change will be needed in the existing COAST user-interface. The second method will be a COAST plug-in which provides a means for users (aided by intelligent agents) to directly query the SSWE services through semantic search for web-enabled sensor data.