Kerry Taylor - Semantics & sensors

Semantics & Sensors: The web of real-time meaning

Kerry Taylor, CSIRO ICT CentreW3C Track, Web Directions SouthSydney, 9th October 2009

Image: Burdekin Sensor Network,Pavan Sikka & Google

CSIRO. Web Directions South, Sydney, 9 October 2009

Abstract

• Semantic Web technologies, both those envisaged and those already realised, have the potential to benefit domains where issues such as volume, complexity and heterogeneity can overcome traditional techniques. Sensor networks are one such area where the application of semantics is indicated by scale, complexity, and the need to integrate over heterogeneous standards, sensors and systems for multiple purposes and multiple disciplines.

• The Semantic Sensor Networks W3C Incubator is an international initiative to develop standards for sharing information collected by sensors and sensor networks over the Web, including an ontology for different types of sensing devices and their observations, and new approaches for the semantic markup of sensor descriptions and services that support sensor data exchange and sensor network management.

• Kerry will describe the ongoing effort to increase the quality and reduce the cost of capturing environmental data, to address the growing demand for information about the environmental systems that support Australia’s agricultural, resource and process-based industries.


Where are they heading?

Semantic Web

• The web of data where web content is processed by machines, without human readers.

• The web as a huge, dynamic, evolving database of facts, rather than pages, that can be interpreted and presented in many ways (mashups).

• Fundamental importance of ontologies to describe the fact that represents the data.

• RDF(S) emphasises labelled links as the source of meaning: essentially a graph model either stored locally triple store or distributed as linked open data. A label (URI) uniquely identifies a concept.

• OWL emphasises inference as the source of meaning: a label also refers to a package of logical axioms with a proof theory.

• Usually, the two notions of meaning fit.

• Goal to combine information and services for targeted purpose and new knowledge.

• THE WEB OF MEANING

Sensor Networks

• The internet of things• Wireless Sensor Networks, RFID, stream

gauges, orbiting satellites, weather stations, GPS, traffic sensors, ocean buoys, animal and fish tags, cameras, habitat monitors.

• Today there are 4 billion mobile sensing devices plus even more fixed sensors. The US National Research Council predicts that this may grow to trillions by 2020.

• Record observations of a wide variety of modalities: but a big part is time-series’ of numeric measurements.

• The Open Geospatial Consortium has some web-service standards for shared data access (Sensor Web Enablement).

• Goal is to open up access to real-time and archival data, and to combine in applications.

• THE WEB OF REAL TIME DATA


So what is a semantic sensor network?

• Reduce the difficulty and open up Sensor Network use by:• Allowing high-level specification of the data collection process;• Across separately deployed sensor networks;

• Across heterogeneous sensor types; and• Across heterogeneous sensor network platforms;• Using high-level descriptions of sensor network capability; and

• Interfacing to data integration systems using similar query and capability descriptions.

• To create a Web of Real Time Meaning!


SSN-XG: Semantic Sensor Network Incubator Group

Commenced 1 March 2009.Two main objectives:(a) the development of ontologies for describing sensors, and(b) the extension of the Sensor Model Language (SML), one of the four SWE languages, to support semantic annotations.


W3C Incubator Activity

• An incubator (XG) is a lightweight process to develop an interest group and to get started.

• Initiated by W3C members, can have non-member experts by invitation.

• Meet by telephone weekly• Meet in person once or twice• Use W3C assets: web site, wiki, mailing lists, teleconference

tools,…• Deliverable in one year.• Transition to “Working Group” if serious.


Membership of SSN-XG

• 38 people from 17 organisations, including• CSIRO• Universities in

• US, Germany, Finland, Spain, Britain.

• Multinationals• Boeing, Ericsson.

• Small companies• in semantics, communications, software

• Other research institutes• DERI (Ireland), Fraunhofer (Germany), ETRI (Korea), MBARI (US), SRI

International (US), MITRE (US), US Defense, CTIC (Spain).


The work of the W3C SSN-XG

• Deliverables • The report will describe a framework (ontologies) for semantically

describing sensors and • How mappings can be constructed both from these ontologies to

existing standards and from suitably annotated documents complying with existing standards to the ontologies.

• The submission will cover specification of semantic annotation of Sensor Model Language (SML-S).

• Applications• Discovery

• Documentation• Controlled vocabulary• Tasking

• Composition


Where we are up to: Ontology


Where we are up to: Annotation

• Use Cases • RDF-ization of SWE standards • Integration of sensor data • Creation of semantic sensor Web mashups

• Different types of annotation • As "composition by inclusion of remote resources" • As "model reference to a ontological description"

• Possible Annotation Techniques • XLink

• xlink:href maps to rdf:resource (GML has rdf-like structure) • However, there are multiple different interpretations of XLink within OGC community • Need mechanism to differentiate 'semantic annotations' from other uses of XLink

• RDFa• RDFa provides formal syntax and interpretation of annotations • However, mainly adopted by the XHTML community (but discussed as annotation

technique for XML in general)

• Extraction of semantics from other attributes and xml elements values • Some elements in SWE could be filled with URIs directly.


What CSIRO is doing with it


Using Semantics to Program a Weather Station

• Aim to represent the function as well as the programming language of a sensor system as an OWL DL ontology.

• Queries and programming instructions are also ontological concepts, entered through a semantic interface extended from Protégé.

• Classified through a reasonerand translated to the native language.

• Patent pending.

• Photo by Dr Kerry Taylor, CSIRO


Tasmanian Networks

Irrigated pasture• A dense network of wireless soil moisture sensors is

helping improve water use efficiency at Elliott Research Farm in north-western Tasmania. The goal is to develop an intelligent sensor web that adapts its sensing and processing behaviour in response to real-time changes in the current situation or predicted conditions. Photo by Mr David McClenaghan, CSIRO

Hydrology• A hydrological sensor web test-bed in Tasmania’s South Esk River Catchment. A research platform to investigate linking sensors, measuring environmental parameters such as rainfall, temperature and wind speed, with numerical models used to predict water flow in river catchments.• Comprising: 7 weather stations, 12 rainfall gauges, 11 water level monitors, and hydrological models.


Phenonet – microclimate sensing for plant phenomics

• Phenomics: Start with a particular observable trait or phenotype and work to discover the causal gene.

• with Australian Plant Phenomics Facility, to examine the influence of microclimate on test plantings intended to compare the phenomics of grain varieties

• Photos Carl Davies, CSIRO Plant Industry, VRU.


Phenonet – microclimate sensing for plant phenomics

• Sensor networks allow for an intensity and convenience of data collection not otherwise feasible.

• Using CSIRO-developed Fleck nodes sourced from Powercom/Datacall.

• Variety of sensors: weather (wind speed & direction, temperature, humidity), photosynthetically active radiation, leaf temperature, soil moisture profile, soil temperature.

• Variety of sampling frequency, from daily to 5 minutes.• Target deployment size 40-200 nodes.• Aim of semantics: to assist in programming the sensor network.


SSN workshop at International Semantic Web Conference 2009

• Follows a similar event in 2006 – but much livelier 3 years on!

• ict.csiro.au/conferences/ssn/ssn09 (google semantic sensor networks 2009)

• 11 peer-reviewed papers on:

• surveys related to SSN-XG

• ontology acquisition• composition

• contextual modelling & learning• URIs and mashup architectures• time series representations

• smart products


Sensors anywhere and Semantics everywhere!

• Sensor and domain ontologies provide a common view of the data from the sensor networks and from other sources through data integration to the application.

• Semantic queries provide a highly hardware- and application-independent means of describing the sensor network and data integration task

• Ontologies and semantic queries in the network provide a natural link into semantic data integration at a higher level inthe software stack.

• Reasoning over the ontologies allows the generation of the low-level operations that bind the system together:

• Code generation in the sensor networks;• Mapping data from sensor networks, other databases;• Connecting to and controlling modelling and analysis as web

services.


Acknowledgement

• The members of the W3C SSN-XG – especially Amit Sheth & Cory Henson

• The CSIRO project teams – especially Dr Peter Lamb and Dr Michael Compton

Contact UsPhone: 1300 363 400 or +61 3 9545 2176

Email: [email protected] Web: www.csiro.au

Thank you

CSIRO ICT CentreKerry TaylorResearch Scientist

Phone: 02 6216 7038Email: [email protected]: www.ict.csiro.au

SSN-XG: www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/ssn/

Kerry Taylor - Semantics & sensors

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