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Geospatial Sensor Web - Concepts, Technologies and Applications

Sensors and earth observation networks deliver a broad range of data about the environment and the state of the earth. To facilitate the access to these sensors and the collected data, the idea of the Sensor Web is an important technological foundation in an increasing number of applications and domains. Typical domains that benefit from the application of Sensor Web technology are for example hydrology, oceanography, environmental monitoring (e.g. air quality measurements, noise monitoring), meteorology, and seismology. In addition, many Sensor Web applications exist in the field of citizen science to handle observations made by humans.

There are several challenges that are in the focus of current Sensor Web research. These comprise for example interoperability (e.g. OGC Sensor Web Enablement standards), best practice recommendations how to build Sensor Web systems in different domains, the processing and analysis of sensor observation data, event detection, and semantics of sensor data. Furthermore, technologies and concepts such as the Internet of Things, Citizen Science, and Linked Data offer new opportunities to enhance existing Sensor Web infrastructures with new types of data and functionality.

This special issue aims to provide a comprehensive overview of Sensor Web applications as well as advancements of Sensor Web technology. This overview includes emerging ideas and research results, but practical evaluations and case studies are also of interest. 


Guest Editors:

Dr. Simon Jirka, 52°North GmbH, Germany (jirka@52north.org
Dr. Christoph Stasch, 52°North GmbH, Germany (c.stasch@52north.org)


  1. Sensor technologies and capabilities have an effect on observational data quality. Typically, data management begins, at best, when a data manager obtains the data and needs to describe it sufficiently to data...

    Authors: Janet Fredericks and Mike Botts
    Citation: Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards 2018 3:3
  2. 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, chemi...

    Authors: Elena Partescano, Alberto Brosich, Marina Lipizer, Vanessa Cardin and Alessandra Giorgetti
    Citation: Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards 2017 2:22
  3. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has conducted much work in the past on event-based models and architectures. However, the current OGC standard baseline only supports synchronous web service capabilities, ...

    Authors: Lorenzo Bigagli and Matthes Rieke
    Citation: Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards 2017 2:18
  4. The mission of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is to protect human health and the environment, including air, water and land. Understanding the extent of pollution in waters and identif...

    Authors: Tad Slawecki, Dwane Young, Britt Dean, Brandon Bergenroth and Kimberly Sparks
    Citation: Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards 2017 2:13