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Abstract

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) addresses the requirement of integrating sensor information into spatial information infrastructures by developing service interfaces, protocols and data types in the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) specification series. Using web-based services as tools for interdisciplinary data exchange, as well as for the extensive usage of heterogeneous data resources is an important step towards addressing today’s larger scale environmental problems (Bacharach, 2008). By making measurements and results discoverable and accessible over the internet, data producers can reduce data redundancy and existing data sets can be used to their full capacity. Even though SWE services are designed to be a foundation for »plug&play« access to sensors and sensor networks, questions about how to apply standards for information providers still have to be answered. Compared to the »state of the art« of specialised mass-market ready sensor and communication technology, SWE standards appear bloated, impractical and hard to implement. The project SLEWS (Sensor-based Landslide Early Warning System) uses existing commercial sensor products, implementing SWE technologies on top as a middleware layer to provide the data in an open and interoperable manner as a proof-of-concept. Results of the project’s work outline approaches to improve the process of providing sensor data in a SWE-enabled format using today’s commonly used internet technologies. The components considered are based on the Open Source Spatial Data Infrastructure framework deegree. It is outlined which components comprise the system, how spatial information can be accessed by users and which technologies are relevant. Based on the concept of grid-computing, a proposal for ensuring fail-safe operation is laid out.