The Smart Sensor Web

Roland Piquepaille writes "As writes Vincent Tao for GEO World, integrating the billions of sensors already present in our environment with the power of the Web will represent 'a revolutionary leap in earth observation.' 'In short, the Sensor Web offers full-dimensional, full-scale and full-phase sensing and monitoring of Earth at all levels: global, regional and local.' The Sensor Web will need to have five characteristics to be successful. It must be interoperable, intelligent, dynamic, flexible and scalable. And the Sensor Web architecture will have four layers: a sensor layer, a communication layer, a location layer and an information layer. When it's here, it will have 'extraordinary significance for science, environmental monitoring, public safety and many other domains of activity.' This summary contains the essential concepts of the original and dense article."

Comments

Smart Dust

[Via_Patrino]

It looks like Smart Dust.

But why to make such thing global? And i think there isn't computer power to process or store such amount of information.

Not quite like Smart Dust

[tessaiga]

It looks like Smart Dust

Not quite. Smart dust (a project that started back in 1999 at the Robotics lab at Berkeley, and which reached the prototype testing stage earlier this year) was never intended to be a global, long-term sensor network. Its strengths are that it can be easily deployed in areas which have been traditionally difficult to fit with conventional wireless sensor networks (such as battlefields) and that it is self-organizing so minimal setup time is required (again, important in combat applications -- there was a reason Smart Dust research is funded by DARPA). Neither feature is essential to the global sensor network that this story is discussing.

The primary reason Smart Dust wouldn't be a good fit (aside from the relatively high cost of deploying it, compared to using a cheaper, less miniaturized commercial solution) is the power problem. A big challenge for networking researchers involved with this type of sensor net is that each dust "mote" has very limited power reserves, which once consumed are typically not replenishable. (There have been ideas tossed around about recharging by harvesting solar or vibrational energy, but those are just idle speculation at the moment.) This is great for something like a battlefield network, which only needs to be up for the duration of your conflict, but is unsuitable for a persistant network.

Alternate Meanings

[benjamindees]

Never trust vague government proposals. The amount of buzzwords in this one is just too much to let go without comment:

• interoperable- We want to be able to spy on everything from cars to refrigerators. These various systems should be able to coordinate their spying automatically.
  
  
• intelligent- We're not very smart; we want the electronics to do the thinking for us and just tell us who the terrorists are, kinda like in Minority Report.
  
  
• dynamic- We don't yet know exactly what we want, but whatever it is, it had better do everything we want.
  
  
• flexible- This important spying technology will probably only be initially approved by citizen-voters as traffic-monitors or whatnot. Naturally, we want to be able to use it for other things (spying).
  
  
• scalable- We want our spy systems to easily transition from spying on just a few ATMs or traffic intersections to tracking everyone 24/7.
  

Horsepower.. it's.. important to look for if you want a truck that will tow heavy things.

It's not important at all. My inline 6-cylinder Jeep will tow more than any V8 regardless of the horsepower because it is designed for high torque and has twice as many gears. It might not go as quickly as a 454 with a turbo but it could pull a tractor-trailer if you could find a way to attach it. I think the fact that you don't even recognize the complete irrelevance of horsepower to your example makes it prime for categorization as a buzzword.