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

butterfly?

[SHEENmaster]

Can we finally kill that damn butterfly and stop these hurricanes?

Re:butterfly?

[CGP314]

I hate Microsoft as much as the next slashdotter, but I think blaming hurricanes on them is going a bit far.

stop looking at me

[OwlofCreamCheese]

if this was an anime, the 5 things it needed would be diffrent teenagers with social/mental problems and they would combine together to create "GLOBAL SENSOR WEB!"

Sensory Overload

[l810c]

These Buzzwords are killing me...

interoperable, intelligent, dynamic, flexible and scalable Arggg.

a sensor layer, a communication layer, a location layer and an information layer Ahhhh.

Depending on the properties of sensors, geographic coverage, network access capabilities and, more importantly, domain applications, the physical architecture (i.e., the first three layers) can be very different. The information layer serves as a backbone and shares a commonality. This layer is a gateway to integrate and fuse observations from spatially referenced sensors. It connects widely distributed in-situ sensors and remote sensors over wired or wireless networks. Interoperability becomes a key to enable the information layer's integration capability. Uppercut.

Well it sure Sounds Cool...

Re:Sensory Overload

[stewby18]

These Buzzwords are killing me...

interoperable, intelligent, dynamic, flexible and scalable Arggg.

Just because something is a buzzword doesn't mean that it doesn't have meaning or that it isn't important.

• interoperable - There's going to be a ton of different architectures, software, etc. out there. Unless a system can communicate whith all of them, it can't make use of them.
• intelligent - That's a heck of a lot of data; it's going to have to be processed quite a bit before humans deal with it, or it's useless.
• dynamic - The sensors will be moving around and going on- and off-line all the time. You have to take that into consideration when designing.
• flexible - If it won't be a centrally-controlled deployment, then the ability to do as much of what you want as possible with what is available is very important. Also, see 'dynamic'.
• scalable - There are a heck of a lot of sensors. You can't say "let's have them all communicate directly with one central server." Scalability is perhaps the most important feature of any large, dynamic network.

Sometimes things get to be buzzwords because they actually matter. Horsepower is a buzzword in the car arena, but that doesn't mean that it's not important to look for if you want a truck that will tow heavy things.

"...billions of sensors already present"

[Anonymous Coward]

There are that many X10 webcams out there already?

Get ready for some tinfoil hats

[BizidyDizidy]

This is precisely the kind of article that lends itself to conspiracy theory. Typically, I'm skeptical of that kind of reaction, but this is getting a little creepy.

The real task is to rely on government (or corporate interests?) to not abuse the power that such an in-depth system can provide. Does anyone trust them to do so?

I'm all for the "oh, neat" factor, but it often seems that the people producing such things aren't cognizant enough of ALL of the ramifications.

voices from the sky

[potpie]

Now that we have omnipresent video monitoring, we should have omnipotent speakers installed everywhere in the world. That way, when someone sees something bad on the satellite video, they can yell at the person directly.

Tell me more!

[orthogonal]

[I]ntegrating the billions of sensors already present in our environment with the power of the Web will represent 'a revolutionary leap in earth observation.'

This sounds great!

Please send me more information about how I can use these sensor nets to make a difference!

You can email me at: John.Poindexter@Technically.Not.A.Convicted.Felon. gov

PS, I'm sure my friend John would be interested too! You can email him a prospectus at:
JAshcroft@We.Run.A.Christian.DOJ.gov

PPS, don't worry if you get the email addresses wrong. I've got some friends who monitor almost all email, and I'm sure they'll pass along anything interesting!

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.

Great Idea

[code_echelon]

This is a great idea and another really good use of the web. Once it is the later stages of the project this really could lead to a lot of advancements in research in the areas that apply. Here are a few other links I found interesing on this topic:

• Sensor Webs at Nasa
• Sensor Web Whitepaper
• PC Magazine article

No reliance on a single "tower"

[erpbridge]

I see they're being smart, and making a cumulative update forwarding capability in these.

One thing I've always said a cell phone should have is the ability to pick up cell phone broadcast signals to determine which are nearby. Then, in the case of a tower outage, or straying too far away, you would switch over to a peer-to-peer version where your signal would get passed on via other phones to the next nearest tower. Hopefully this functionality would use a low quality, low bandwidth signal, so as not to disrupt other callers on the phones it's passed through.

Of course, this would require a general reworking of the phones firmware between you and the tower, to leave a small gap of bandwidth open at all times for this forwarded traffic. (There's a good 5-10 years of rolling out phones!) The sooner some phones with this capability get rolled out, you'd ahave a slowly expanding infrastructure. However, it would greatly expand coverage area, especially in places that are just outside of the coverage area.

These sensors use something like that to pass on data to the next nearest device with Internet connectivity. Good to see someone was thinking ahead. Just hope that capability doesn't get held back because of a budget cut or "I'm not going to pay for someone else's traffic" NIMBY arguments.

In Democratic America. . .

[kfg]

Smart sensors watch YOU!

No, wait. That can't be right. Let me try again.

In Soviet Russia smart sensors didn't EXIST!

No, that doesn't quite seem right either.

Wait, wait, let me try again. I'll get it sooner or later.

KFG

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.

My $0.02

[mcrbids]

1) It's not the "web", it's the "Internet" - unless you plan on making everything a bunch of HTTP servers?

2) Having a video feed, and knowing what the feed is of, are two very different things. Knowing the IP address will only be marginally helpful, especially with DHCP or PPPOE in use in *alot* of cases.

3) So, you have a picture of some guy's bedroom. It's 3 blocks from a commited crime. And...?

4) Also, remember that power corrupts... We need to ensure that the proper checks are in place before we start trusting this technology.

5) Remember TIA? Co-ordinating data from so many disparate sources is much more daunting than it seems, however sexy it sounds.

C'mon!

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.