ISENS: Information Processing System for Sensor Data

The overload of sensor data and related analyses demand the development of a distributed system for managing associated semantic metadata, in order to enable e¿cient decision making. Although significant advancements have been made in emerging semantic technologies, a critical missing piece is the development of an integrated, secure, and distributed system for optimized processing of sensor related metadata. This project will develop a distributed-knowledge management system for het­erogeneous sensor metadata. The system will support ontologies, dynamic and static knowledge bases, querying on a semantic level, and efficient data storage and retrieval to enable fundamentally improved decision making and reasoning capabilities. Phase I evaluated and selected specific semantic Web, database, and networking technologies for use in the ISENS system. A working distributed prototype was developed, which demonstrated the feasibility of building a production quality, information management system for sharing semi­structured sensor data. In Phase II, a fully functioning system, with an extended set of capabilities for testing and evaluation by clients, will be built. Algorithms will be implemented to enable the integration of independent and distributed data centers, support for metadata representation, querying on a semantic level and by key words, secure data transfer, access control, and a portable user-­friendly interface. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee: The semantic knowledge management and information integration system should be di­rectly applicable to the sharing of distributed data sets from processed sensor data and imagery analyses, in order to enable situation assessment and decision making. Potential customers include commercial companies with information integration problems