Denis Havlik

From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities’ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term “envirofied” Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management).

Future Internet technologies for environmental applications

This paper investigates the usability of Future Internet technologies (aka “Generic Enablers of the Future Internet”) in the context of environmental applications. The paper incorporates the best aspects of the state-of-the-art in environmental informatics with geospatial solutions and scalable processing capabilities of Internet-based tools. It specifically targets the promotion of the “Environmental Observation Web” as an observation-centric paradigm for building the next generation of environmental applications. In the Environmental Observation Web, the great majority of data are considered as observations. These can be generated from sensors (hardware), numerical simulations (models), as well as by humans (human sensors). Independently from the observation provenance and application scope, data can be represented and processed in a standardised way in order to understand environmental processes and their interdependencies. The development of cross-domain applications is then leveraged by technologies such as Cloud Computing, Internet of Things, Big Data Processing and Analytics. For example, “the cloud” can satisfy the peak-performance needs of applications which may occasionally use large amounts of processing power at a fraction of the price of a dedicated server farm. The paper also addresses the need for Specific Enablers that connect mainstream Future Internet capabilities with sensor and geospatial technologies. Main categories of such Specific Enablers are described with an overall architectural approach for developing environmental applications and exemplar use cases.

The Future Internet Enablement of the Environment Information Space

This paper motivates the enablement of the Future Internet to become a highly functional service platform supporting the design and the operation of software applications in the Environmental Information Space. It reports on the experience made by the European research project ENVIROFI as one of the usage area projects within the Future Internet Public-Private Partnership programme. It describes the software components (environmental and specific enablers) which are required to connect with the domain-independent capabilities (generic enablers) of the Future Internet core platform for geospatially and environmentally-driven applications.

Sharing Sensor Data with SensorSA and Cascading Sensor Observation Service

The SANY IP consortium (http://www.sany-ip.eu) has recently developed several interesting service prototypes that extend the usability of the Open Geospatial Consortium “Sensor Web Enablement” (OGC SWE) architecture. One such service prototype, developed by the Austrian Research Centers, is the “cascading SOS” (SOS-X). SOS-X is a client to the underlying OGC Sensor Observation service(s) (SOS). It provides alternative access routes to users (or services) interested in accessing data. In addition to a simple cascading, SOS-X can re-format, re-organize, and merge data from several sources into a single SOS offering. Thanks to the built-in “Formula 3” prototype, a kind of time series library, SOS-X will be enabled to derive new data sets on the fly executing arbitrary algebraic operations on one or more data input streams. This article will discuss the SOS-X development status (focusing at end of 2008), further development agenda in year 2009, and possibilities for using the SOS-X outside of the SANY IP.

Robust and Trusted Crowd-Sourcing and Crowd-Tasking in the Future Internet

A great majority of the EU citizens already owns a cellular phone. An increasing part of these phones are smartphones with a broadband internet connection. This growing network of smart internet enabled devices could act as a dense sensing network, as well as a tool for individual informing and tasking of mobile citizens and volunteers.

Crowdsourcing in Crisis and Disaster Management – Challenges and Considerations

With the rise of social media platforms, crowdsourcing became a powerful tool for mobilizing the public. Events such as the earthquake in Haiti or the downfall of governments in Libya and Egypt indicate its potential in crisis situations. In the scope of this paper, we discuss the relevance of crowdsourcing in the area of crisis and disaster management (CDM). Starting with a general overview of the topic, we distinguish between different types of crowds and crowdsourcing and define what is meant by crowdtasking in the area of CDM. After considering technological, societal and ethical challenges for using crowdsourcing in crisis management, applications of crowdsourcing tools in ongoing projects are described and future developments outlined.

Crowdsourcing and crowdtasking in crisis management: Lessons learned from a field experiment simulating a flooding in the city of the Hague

The EU FP7 project DRIVER conducts a number of experiments that explore new approaches for addressing known deficiencies in crisis management. The “Interaction with Citizens” experiment campaign focuses on testing the usability and acceptance of various methods and tools that facilitate crisis communication via several channels. These include: informing, alerting, micro-tasking, incident information crowdsourcing from volunteers, and usage of this information to improve situational awareness. The results highlight that volunteer motivation in a serious game like scenario is important to simulate participation in crisis events. We also argue that the scenario complexity level needs to be simple enough to avoid difficulties in communication with non-professional participants in addition to external influences in a field experiment. In this paper, we present lessons learned from the final experiment of this campaign that investigated two-way communication solutions between crisis managers and citizens or unaffiliated volunteers in a simulated flooding scenario in the city of The Hague.

Training Support for Crisis Managers with Elements of Serious Gaming

This paper presents a methodology and a prototypic software implementation of a simple system supporting resource management training for crisis managers. The application that is presented supports the execution and assessment of a desktop training for decision makers on a tactical and strategic level. It introduces elements of turn-based strategic “serious gaming”, with a possibility to roll back in time and re-try new decision paths, while keeping the graphical user interface as simple as possible. Consequently, the development efforts concentrated on: (1) formulating and executing crisis management decisions; (2) assuring responses of all simulated entities adhere to natural laws of the real world; and (3) analyzing progress and final results of the training exercise. The paper presents the lessons learned and discusses the transferability and extensibility of the proposed solution beyond the initial scenario involving accidental release of toxic gas in an urban area in Israel.

ENVIROFI - Bringing Biodiversity to the Future Internet

In order to meet the requirements for observational biodiversity data, new sources of data must be enabled; for this purpose, new tools will be required. In order to effectively implement such tools, standardized building blocks such as the enablers defined by the FI will be very valuable. Thus, it is of utmost urgency that the requirements posed by the biodiversity sector are clearly structured and made available for implementation of environmental enablers within the FI. The ENVIROFI project has gone to great lengths so provide these requirements for various environmental domains; of specific relevant to this paper being the biodiversity domain. We hope to successfully contribute to the future of e-Environment in this manner.

SUDPLAN’s Experiences with the OGC-Based Model Web Services for the Climate Change Usage Area

SUDPLAN is currently developing a technical solution for Model Web/Observation Web in the Climate Change usage area. Proposed solution is based on the Open Geospatial Consortium standards, and follows the ideas expressed in SANY Sensor Service Architecture (SensorSA). SUDPLAN also continued the development of the SANY software, resulting in native SOS, SPS and 2D coverage support in ”Time Series Toolbox” framework for building sensor web applications. SUDPLAN re-uses much of the OGC SWE and SANY SensorSA functionality to: (1) configure and run the models; (2) provide the data (observations) required for model execution; (3) inform the user on model run progress and (4) access the model results. In this paper, we shall describe the SUDPLAN’s experiences with implementing of the interoperable Model Web using OGC standards, and discuss the advantages of various services from the OGC SWE suite as compared to non-SWE alternatives in the Climate Change context.