Evaluation of Standards at Western

2009

and OGC Sensor Web Enablement (OGC SWE) define standard protocols to operate instruments, including methods to calibrate, configure, trigger data acquisition, and retrieve instrument data based on specified temporal and geospatial criteria. These standards also provide standard ways to describe instrument capabilities, properties, and data structures produced by the instrument. These standard operational protocols and descriptions enable observing systems to manage very diverse instruments as well as to acquire, process, and interpret their data in a uniform and automated manner. We refer to this property as "instrument interoperability". This paper describes integration and evaluation of MBARI PUCK protocol [3] within different observatories including OBSEA in Spain, the ESONET test-bed in Germany, and the SmartBay observatory in Canada.

2010

ieeexplore.ieee.org

In this article we describe our experiences with interoperable data management and instrument control standards in the Western Mediterranean Cabled Observatory, OBSEA (www.obsea.es) ). The SARTI research group of the Technical University of Catalonia in Vilanova i la Geltrú is in charge of OBSEA observatory development. SARTI collaborated with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) to explore interoperability issues within the ESONET project. One of the strong demands of ESONET is that a real-time data web interface from online observatories is needed. In order to do so, online data are urgently needed, and some proposed standards must be applied to ensure interoperability between instruments and data of multiple European observatories.

2010

IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 2000

Ocean observing systems may include a wide variety of sensor and instrument types, each with its own capabilities, communication protocols, and data formats. Connecting disparate devices into a network typically requires specialized software drivers that translate command and data between the protocols of the individual instruments, and that of the platform on which they are installed. In addition, such platforms typically require extensive manual configuration to match the driver software and other operational details of each network port to a specific connected instrument. In this paper, we describe an approach to "plug & work" interoperability, using standardized protocols to greatly reduce the amount of instrument-specific software and manual configuration required for connecting instruments to an observatory system. Our approach has two main components. First, we use the sensor interface descriptor (SID) model, based on the Open Geospatial Consortium's (OGC) SensorML standard, to describe each instrument's protocol and data format, and to provide a generic driver/parser. Second, a new OGC standard known as the programmable underwater connector with knowledge (PUCK) protocol enables storage and retrieval of the SID file from the instrument itself. We demonstrate and evaluate our approach by applying it to three commonly used marine instruments in the OBSEA (Barcelona, Spain) observatory test bed. ).

2010

2016

The complexity of marine installations for ocean observing systems has grown significantly in recent years. In a network consisting of tens, hundreds or thousands of marine instruments, manual configuration and integration becomes very challenging. Simplifying the integration process in existing or newly established observing systems would benefit system operators and is important for the broader application of different sensors. This article presents an approach for the automatic configuration and integration of sensors into an interoperable Sensor Web infrastructure. First, the sensor communication model, based on OGC's SensorML standard, is utilized. It serves as a generic driver mechanism since it enables the declarative and detailed description of a sensor's protocol. Finally, we present a data acquisition architecture based on the OGC PUCK protocol that enables storage and retrieval of the SensorML document from the sensor itself, and automatic integration of sensors i...

Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards, 2017

Sensor engineering is continuously evolving as devices become cheaper, smaller, more intelligent, and more efficient. Today, oceanographic sensors aim at monitoring marine processes by means of physical, chemical, and biological variables, and use different data formats, units, parameters, resolutions, data quality standards, and protocols. Therefore, integration and interoperability at European level represent a challenge. To cope with this challenge, the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards, developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), are a good solution, as they ensure interoperability and long-term archiving of data series with complete information for all devices. The interoperability allows integrating information from different sources or pre-existing architectures, such as those developed in the

OCEANS 2009-EUROPE, 2009

As systems developers build the tools and methods for transport and discovery of marine data, we must carefully consider what information must accompany these data and how it is transported in order to enable adequate assessment and understanding in a machine-to-machine global exchange. Providing a common framework to communicate the history of a sensor, data processing and processing results can create a shared understanding which will build a solid foundation for the development of a trusted system of systems for sharing global environmental data.

2003

The methods and software interfaces used by ocean observatory operators and scientist users to access data generated by sensors and instruments attached to research observatories vary widely from facility to facility. The tools used to access instrument metadata and to control various instrument functions are also variable between observatories. An effort has begun in the US to define software standards that could be implemented at any ocean observatory to provide access to oceanographic instruments independent of the observatory on which they operate. Interoperability also enables the seamless combination of data streams from more than one observatory into a virtual ocean observatory. This paper describes the concepts and a proposed process to develop interoperability standards for ocean observatories.