Publishing sensor observations into Geospatial Information Infrastructures: A use case in fire danger assessment

• Published in: Environmental modelling & software : with environment data news 2013-10, Vol.48, p.65-80
• Main Authors: Díaz, Laura, Bröring, Arne, McInerney, Daniel, Libertá, Giorgio, Foerster, Theodor
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Biological and medical sciences; computer software; Environmental models; environmental monitoring; Fire danger; fire hazard; forest fires; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects. Techniques; Geospatial Information Infrastructures; information systems; infrastructure; Internet; Methods and techniques (sampling, tagging, trapping, modelling...); OGC; Sensor Observation Service; Sensors; Spatial data infrastructures; weather
• ISSN: 1364-8152; 1873-6726
• DOI: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2013.06.002

To improve environmental monitoring, the availability of large coverage, interoperable spatio-temporal data is crucial for its integration into environmental models, for example, to compute fire danger models. In order to produce up-to-date and accurate results, these models require data with high temporal and spatial resolution. Thus, it is promising to consider the increasing number of in-situ sensors providing observations of our environment in real-time. Today, interoperable access to such spatio-temporal data is achieved by Geospatial Information Infrastructures (GIIs). From a technical point of view, GIIs provide these data through standards-based Web service interfaces. While those Web service interfaces already enable the interoperable discovery and retrieval of sensor observations, the functionality to publish sensor observations is still an arduous task. Hence, in this paper, we present an approach to improve the registration of sensors and the publication of their observations via standards-based Web service interfaces. We evaluate our approach by extending a standards-based GII and by applying the developed approach as a proof of concept to integrate in-situ weather observations into the European Forest Fire Information System for assessing fire danger in Spain. [Display omitted] •Facilitate publication of sensor data in spatial information infrastructures.•Increasing availability of (standard) high spatio-temporal resolution sensor data.•Increasing reusability of sensor data to run scientific models.•Improving fire danger model results accuracy with higher resolution sensor data.•Middleware components to conceal sensor technology and geospatial standards.