Albert Remke

SenseBox – A Generic Sensor Platform for the Web of Things

Applications of the Web of Things reach from smart shoes posting your running performance online, over the localization of goods in the production chain, to computing the insurance cost of cars based on the actually driven kilometers. Thereby, Web of Things applications follow the REST paradigm, i.e. access to things and their properties is offered via REST APIs. This allows an easy meshing of web-enabled things into existing Web applications. This work introduces the SenseBox, a small computing device equipped (1) with different sensors to perceive its environment and (2) with a Web server and an according REST API which makes it available as a first class citizen on the Web. In an example use case of this generic sensor platform, the SenseBox is deployed next to a road and its in-built ultra sonic sensor is used to detect the number of bypassing cars and eventually determine the traffic density.

enviroCar: A Citizen Science Platform for Analyzing and Mapping Crowd-Sourced Car Sensor Data

This article presents the enviroCar platform for collecting geographic data acquired from automobile sensors and openly providing those data for further processing and analysis. By plugging a low-cost On-Board Diagnostics (OBD-II) adapter into a car and using an Android smartphone, various kinds of sensor data measured by todays cars can be collected and uploaded on to the Web. Once available on the Web, these data can be used to monitor traffic and related environmental parameters. We analyse the OBD-II interface and its potential usage for environmental monitoring, e.g. to estimate fuel consumption and resulting CO2 emissions, noise emission, and standing times. Next, we present the main contribution of this article, the system design of the enviroCar platform. This system design consists of the enviroCar app and the enviroCar server, which allows for flexible geoprocessing of the uploaded data. We focus in this article on the description of the spatiotemporal RESTful Web Service interface and underlying data model specifically designed for handling the mobile sensor data. Finally, we present application scenarios in which the enviroCar platform can act as a powerful tool, e.g. regarding traffic monitoring and smarter cities (e.g. the detection of pollutant emission hotspots in the city), or towards applications for a quantified self (e.g. monitoring fuel consumption). We started the enviroCar project in 2013 and have been able to attract a growing number of participants since then. In a crowd-funding initiative, enviroCar was successfully funded by volunteers, demonstrating the interest in this platform.

A Hybrid Approach to Disseminate Large Volume Sensor Data for Monitoring Global Change

Monitoring global change is one of the major challenges in the twenty first century. It requires accessing large volumes of various data, collected by a multitude of remote and in situ sensors. Various approaches (file-based, service-based and satellite-based) have demonstrated significant disadvances, which can be concluded as inappropriate. In this article, we describe a hybrid approach using a satellite-based system for accessing sensor data on distributed nodes and then disseminating the data on the web through web services. The approach is demonstrated based on the satellite-dissemination system of GEONETCast using two use cases for raster-based (MSG-2) and feature-based (MODIS) data.

Wissensbasierte GIS-Werkzeuge zur Unterstützung fließgewässerökologischer Planungen

Von entscheidender Bedeutung fur die Aussagekraft umweltbezogener Planungen sind Umfang und Qualitat der verfugbaren Informationen uber den Planungsgegenstand. Der vorliegende Beitrag erlautert das Problem der Erhebung okologischer Grundlagendaten fur Fachinformationssysteme und stellt die Konzeption eines wissensbasierten GIS-Werkzeugs zur Diskussion, das die Erfassung und Analyse des okologischen Zustandes von Fliesgewassern unterstutzt.